


Buried Shallow Inside

by MarvelManiac24



Category: Captain America (Movies), Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: Angst, Bucky Barnes Needs a Hug, Complete, Did I mention sass, Drama, Get it because birds have wings, Humor, Hurt/Comfort, M/M, My precious gays, Romance, Sass, Secrets, Wingman Sam?, so many feels
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-10-11
Updated: 2014-10-18
Packaged: 2018-02-20 18:55:52
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 14
Words: 69,804
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2439239
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/MarvelManiac24/pseuds/MarvelManiac24
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Tony is given a reason to hate the man destroying his best friend's life. Steve knows he can't give up on Bucky. Through Steve, the Winter Soldier tries to find who he really is. (The events after Captain America: The Winter Soldier.)</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. The Lost Against the Found

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> (2016 author's note update) This is my idea of what would've happened after Captain America: The Winter Soldier and before Avengers: Age of Ultron.

* * *

Tony got the tip from an unknown informant. He didn't seek out the person behind the shades nor the news that the person brought. He never did feel like the accident was really an accident, that things like that couldn't just  _happen_ without a real reason behind it. Nevertheless, he never did research into it. Of course he wanted to know what really happened to his parents, but he would rather have blood for their deaths.

But now he knew. He knew that the car wreck was only made to seem like it wasn't intended to happen. Given that detail from the unknown informant and the fact that it matched his original assumption that his parents were murdered, he believed it. He knew he was right on another thing: he wanted blood for it.

"Tony, this really isn't a good idea," Natasha told him as the billionaire prepped one of his new suits to go and look for the murdering bastard.

"You really think I'm an expert on good, well-planned ideas?" he turned to her, his words slowing for emphasis, "And do you really think that I care?"

"I know you're an expert on a lot of things, especially bad ideas, and that you rarely care about the consequences," Tony huffed and was fully suited, all but his face covered by metal. "Pepper will be back in a few hours. Just wait for her and-"

"I never asked for your input." The ferocity in his voice was enough to shut her up. She knew that Steve was out looking for Barnes as they spoke, seeing that it was all he did in his spare time. Natasha also knew that Tony couldn't get a hold of Bucky. She could imagine how that would end, with Tony standing over a motionless body, a light smoke coming from the palm of Tony's suit.

Before she could convince him otherwise, Tony left.

That in itself was concerning.

Natasha knew how efficient she was at convincing people to do what she wanted.

She tried to call Steve to give him at least a vague heads-up on the situation, but as usual he didn't respond to his phone. She wondered why he even had a phone if he couldn't even answer one call. Steve found the devices distracting and sparsely used his, much to the inconvenience of everyone that knew and wanted to get a hold of him.

"Damn it."

* * *

Tony made JARVIS search anyone in the area for significant amounts of metal on them. No one paid attention to Iron Man flying over them, as the citizens of New York grew accustom to him and the other Avengers. A few would snap a few photos, but no one was jumping up and down at seeing him.

Tony was getting impatient, more so than normal. "Find anything yet, JARVIS?"

"Nothing to your specifications, Sir."

He would find the bastard. He would find him and make him feel pain beyond belief, if the monster could even feel pain at all.

Tony doubted it.

It wasn't fair. All the questions that Tony still wanted to ask his father, questions about everything from the arc reactors to Pepper, all his questions about himself and his parents would go unanswered. All the things he wanted to tell them, they couldn't hear. All the things they should have had, they would never get. They were supposed to die peacefully in a bed, as old as could be, with Tony holding their hands. It should have been expected, a death from old age. Wrinkled and peaceful, happy with the man their son became. It shouldn't have been when he was only a kid, his parents bloody and mangled in the jagged twists of a car.

Three lives screeched to a halt that day by an assassin who stole the lives of two parents and destroyed the life of their son.

Those brown eyes were set on finding the man who took his parents away, set on seeing him exposed to a pain proportionate to what Tony felt from their absence in his life and the new pain he felt at knowing their deaths were intentional.

"Sir, I may have found something," JARVIS reported.

"Show me."

There. It came up on the display inside the suit's helmet. Two people in the woods, both showing high amounts of metal.

"Sir, you may want to approach them on foot."

"Why?"

"One of them is Steve Rogers. I suspect he wouldn't want you to barge in on his conversation." Ah, yes. A simple man and his hate for technology. Even if technology did send him into the Atlantic to prevent millions of people from dying, and even if technology almost killed him and millions of people a few months ago, it's still done a lot of good for the world.

Tony took the advice and lowered himself to the ground, walking close enough to be able to hear them and far enough away to not be heard. The two were standing in between a few trees, both of them in baseball caps and hoodies despite the heat of the day.

Tony picked up on the middle of their conversation. "They won't hurt you, Bucky-" Steve continued on, undeterred by the assassin yelling for being called that name. Tony had a feeling that Steve did most of the talking. The other guy probably couldn't put more than four words together in a sentence. "I won't let them do anything to you. Please, just come with me. They can't take you away from me-"

"I'm not your  _property_ ," the assassin spat. So far, Tony had been right.

Steve held up his hands, "I didn't mean it that way."

Even under the cap, Tony could see that the bastard was unkempt, with overgrown, unwashed hair and a beard that hadn't been shaved in who knows how long. He looked afraid though Steve didn't pose as a threat to him. Maybe he always looked afraid. That pleased Tony, then it pissed him off. If the assassin was afraid, then he knew what he did wrong.

Steve took a step toward the assassin, backpedaling before being met with a body slamming into his. He blew the shoulder to his chest off like it was nothing, though he was out of breath, and let the man punching him continue on. On his last punch, instead of pulling his fist back to continue the battering, the assassin unwrapped his tightly closed fists and locked them around the front of Steve's dark blue sweatshirt.

"You…" the hit-man started, his hair that was tucked under his hat falling to cover his cheeks as he lowered his head, "You're wasting your time," he brought his other hand, the metal one, up next to the other to cling to Steve's sweatshirt. "He's gone. Your friend can't come back."

Steve had the same expression on his face the whole time he was being attacked by the man in front of him. "He isn't gone. He's right here." He was unmoved by the punches and the dropped shoulder, looking at the man in front of him with remorse.

Remorse?

For a murderer?

Tony had enough.

He took to the air again, not caring about how much noise he made. He flew to the two men- No, the man and the monster.

The assassin heard Tony first, letting go of Steve and running off into the cover of the woods. Tony changed directions, about to follow him when he was jerked forward by a shield hitting him in the shoulder. "Hey!" a none-too-pleased Steve yelled, claiming his shield when it ricocheted back to him. "What the hell do you think you're doing, Tony?" Steve was using his "I'm Captain America, I'm in charge" voice.

Tony turned to Steve. He could catch up with the murderer later. "A public service," he said, hovering ten feet off the ground.

"I was almost there. I almost had him come back with me. Why did you-"

"He isn't setting one foot in that tower!" Tony yelled. He let Steve glare at him for a few seconds before continuing. "I'm surprised he could keep from killing you right then. I expect him to have troubles with suppressing the urge to kill anyone he sees."

"What?" Steve looked at him, jaw jutting out in anger.

Tony's voice could be heard through his mask, slightly robotic and distorted, "You knew about it, didn't you? You knew he- that  _monster_ , killed my parents? That he took the parents of a kid who was too young to live without them?"

"That's not him! That's Hydra." He didn't answer Tony. "They made him that way. The murderer is programmed into him. The murderer isn't him." Steve was getting increasingly angry and distracted. "That's not him.  _That,_ " Steve pointed in the direction that the man fled, "Isn't Bucky."

* * *

Steve left the tower hoping he would come back with Bucky, but instead he came back with a man that was more mad at him than he had been in a long time. Tony had some right to be mad, but he also took the situation out of proportion. Tony started out flying ahead of Steve to get away from the man so they could be mad at each other in peace, but Steve called him on his newfangled cellular device and chided Tony through the speakers of his helmet. He preferred to have the man yell at him through his armor than right into his ear, so he turned around and walked with Steve back to the tower.

Steve continued yelling at Tony as they went up to the residence floors of the tower that Tony added in for any of the passing, going, or staying Avengers. After SHIELD kind of imploded, a lot of people Tony knew were suddenly out of a place to live, notably Natasha and Steve. With the Malibu house leveled by a fake lunatic, Tony and Pepper also found themselves homeless.

Pepper, fresh off a Stark Industry jet from California, was the first to talk to the two marching into the main living area, the steam almost visible coming out of their heads. "Tony. Where have you been? You knew I was coming and off you go to…" she threw her hand into the air, "To do what, exactly?"

There she goes.

"To find some man who may or may not be responsible for your parents' deaths? Really?" Pepper put her hands on her hips. "I'll have you know that while you were gone going God knows what, I wasn't the only one who arrived."

"Pepper, I just got an earful from the Star Spangled Man with a _fucking stupid_ Plan, I don't need you chewing my ass too," Tony said in one breath. Pepper Potts, being the stubborn ginger that she is, stared fiercely back at Tony, thinking about some words she would have with him later.

Natasha walked out from around the corner, a safety razor in her hand and a towel on her shoulder. "Hey guys," she called, "You wanna keep it down? You don't want to scare off the lost puppy that wandered in." Steve and Tony gave her confused look, both with their eyebrows pinched together and Tony with his upper lip raised slightly.

"Why do you have a razor?"

Natasha looked at Pepper like they should already know why.

"Tony wouldn't let me finish."

The confused men followed the women to one of the bathrooms, opposite reactions coming from both of them.

"Bucky," Steve said, astonished and relieved.

"Murderer," Tony voiced his disapproval, angry and ready to fight.

Steve's face softened from its previous expression of being mad at Tony and Tony thought it was hilarious that a monster could ever get that sort of reaction. It's a good thing that he had the reactor and shrapnel removed because it would be having a hard time keeping up with the adrenalin going through the furious Tony Stark. Steve watched the man sitting on the toilet lid, who must have come to the tower under his own will. He was in only an undershirt and boxers, most of his scars visible. Steve assumed that Nat made him take off his clothes so they could be washed and he could change into clean ones. At least, that's what she would think Steve would want her to do. "He won't let me shave that poor excuse of a beard," Nat said, setting the razor and towel down next to the sink.

"Because he doesn't trust you."

Tony laughed. "He doesn't trust anyone."

Steve ignored that and continued, "Would you let a stranger do anything to you that involved blades unless they were a barber or a doctor?"

"You're all talking like I'm not even here." There was no emotion to carry his words.

Tony was wrong. The murderer said double the number of words than he originally thought possible. "I really wish you weren't."

"Tony!" Pepper looked at him with wide eyes as though she were about to slap him.

Moving only his eyes, Bucky looked up at Tony. "You aren't the only one."

"Then why're you even here? You know, the front of this building may only have an 'A' left, but that letter is part of my name. What's stopping me from throwing your ratty ass out?"

The assassin pointed his thumb lazily at Steve. "I came here because of him."

Tony squinted at the man, asking "Why?"

Bucky had that look of a helpless puppy that everyone was starting to believe him to be. "I want answers. He's the only one that can give them to me." Bucky got up and looked in the mirror.

Steve leaned over to Tony. "Please let him stay," he whispered, "Who knows, he could offer intel for us."

"I don't care. I won't let the man who killed my parents stay in the building that has their names on it. That's sick and twisted all in itself."

Bucky rubbed at his beard, saying "It's not that sad, is it?" while the two quietly argued over him.

In a three-against-one argument, two of the three being women and the other being Captain America, Tony had to fight hard but eventually lost. Under duress, he agreed to let the assassin stay at the tower. Tony made his position clear by stating that he would rarely be in the same room as the monster, for when he blew up and went on a murdering spree. Steve was the one to blow up, provoked by that comment, and made everyone leave him and Bucky alone. Bucky was the only one to remain calm the entire time, bored by everything and certainly not entertained by some people fighting over him.

Steve looked over at Bucky, who he thought took offense to the comment, "Don't listen to him. He's a dumbass." He had to remind himself not to stare at the many scars that were now visible to him. It was the first time he saw them. It made him think about the origins of those scars. How many were from torture? How many from events under mind control?

"I already knew that much." The corner of Steve's mouth and his eyebrow rose when he chuckled at Bucky's comment.

Bucky looked tired and dirty. His eyes were dull and dark, yellow and baggy underneath, his mouth completely relaxed as though he didn't have the effort to at least try to look slightly more aware. All Steve wanted to do when he examined Bucky was make him shower and send him to bed, possibly sneaking under the covers like they always did and curling up next to-

"I'm not here because you persuaded me to come. I'm here so I can get some answers out of you. That's all." Steve was pulled from his thoughts. His mouth moved before his brain could tell him not to and replied with "Okay." Had he worn his thoughts on his face? Was what he thinking really written on his face, or did Bucky just say that to clarify his intent?

"Uh," he turned away, taking hold of the door, "You can take a shower. We can talk later." Steve didn't want to be a nuisance and bother Bucky to the point of driving him away, but there was so much he wanted to say. Mostly, he wanted to tell Bucky how responsible he felt for letting him fall. If Steve could have saved him, Hydra wouldn't have found him in the snow and taken him to experiment on him, to brainwash him.

Steve and the others waited in the main living area for Bucky to get out of the shower.

"Do you think it rusts?"

"What, the arm?"

"Not all metal rusts easily, Pepper."

"I wonder if he has to make sure water doesn't get in it."

"No, it can be in water." Underwater, too. Steve didn't have the proof, other than he somehow ended up on the shore instead of on the bottom of the river. He was sure of it, though. He had that gut feeling that Bucky was the one who pulled him out of the water.

"You can't know that, Steve. No one knows who it was."

"But no one knows it wasn't him, either." It had to be him. No one else would have known that Steve was in there.

They could hear the bathroom door click open and eventually the assassin appeared in Steve's T-shirt and sweatpants, Steve's clothes being the only things big enough to fit the tired man. Four different looks were aimed at the man with no real emotion on his face: curiosity, caution, relief, and anger.

"Glad to know I interest you all so much," he said when they continued looking at him.

"So," Steve said, standing and putting his hands in his pockets, "You up for talking?"

Bucky raised and lowered his shoulders, "I guess." He really didn't care either way.

Steve led the way to the den down the hall, letting Bucky choose his seat before he let himself sit. "So what do you want to know?" Bucky was in the chair closest to the entryway and Steve was on the sofa perpendicular to him.

"Why do you want me to remember?" Bucky didn't try to wear that look he had, broken and lost, eyes sad without realizing they were.

"Why?" Steve needed clarification. He thought Bucky wanted to know things like where he came from and who his family and friends were. He didn't think he would have to tell his oldest friend why he wants him to remember his life.

"I already know my history. That was easy to learn, since my history mostly involves you and there's plenty of idiots that practically worship the ground you walk on."

"Oh," was all Steve could say because he didn't expect Bucky to be so specific. Maybe it would be harder to answer his questions than he thought. "You're a good person," he tried, getting a laugh from the other man, "Who a lot of people liked and respected." Not that people don't respect him now too, for his skills in eliminating a target. "They could count on you to bail them out, catch a rogue sniper with a shot of your own."

Bucky started to lose interest. "Look," Steve said, leaning forward, "What I'm trying to say is a lot of people liked you. Everyone missed you when you…" He looked at his knees, not wanting to think about it, "I missed you, Buck."

For once, Steve wasn't yelled at for calling the man that name. It probably just slipped past him.

"So you want me to remember everything because you  _missed_ me?" Bucky said instead, slowly, like he didn't understand it.

Steve looked up at those sad, lost eyes. "What other reason is there?"

* * *

All of the bedrooms of the tower's residence floors had already been claimed by someone, whether an Avenger or their counterpart, or their counterpart's counterpart. There was an unspoken rule that no one mess with other people's stuff, no matter how infrequent their trips to the tower were. Without any vacant rooms, this meant that Bucky had to sleep in Steve's room. Steve, being the considerate man that he is, wouldn't let Bucky sleep on a sofa and was given that spot by Pepper. She had been the one to suggest it, with a silent protest coming from Steve. He also silently suggested that he sleep next to Bucky, in case he had a nightmare in the middle of the night and needed to be calmed down.

It's not like they had never slept in the same bed before, either. Even when they were too old to be sleeping together anymore, they often found themselves under the same covers because one didn't have a place to go, or they both couldn't afford anything more, or Steve was having a bad streak with his asthma, or they just missed each other. The times were hard. They made do with what they had. And Steve and Bucky always could make do with the other there.

It was still such a foreign feeling for Steve to be too big for the thing he was failing to sleep on. He was still used to being too small and frail for the bed he failed to sleep in.

In the early hours, when he would normally be having his morning jog, Steve was making up for the sleep he lost in the night before. Sam Wilson noticed that his sprinting-while-he-jogged buddy was slacking off and went up to the residence floors to bust his ass. He went straight to Steve's room, checking his watch to make sure he wasn't wasting too much daylight to wake up the old fart. Sam walked right by the horizontal Steve, not seeing that he wasn't in his room and instead was hidden behind the back of the sofa. He had been on a late job the day before, missing all the excitement and not knowing any better when he threw open Steve's bedroom door, yelling for him to quit wasting time and wake his lazy ass up.

Sam couldn't expect to see a perfectly made bed and a dark figure running in his direction, for the door.

The figure rammed his shoulder into Sam and they both fell out of Steve's room, the figure reaching to his side for a weapon that wasn't there. The only thing that Sam could manage to say in between his scolding of Steve and the moment he had a shoulder in his ribs was "Jesus-"

Everyone was scrambling from their rooms to find out what was going on. Steve, being the closest to the action, was the first to arrive with lines on his face from his pillow and still half asleep. He rubbed his blond head a few times, a clear "What?" pressed into his expression. Sam was still trying to figure out what hit him, sitting sprawled out on the floor with his hands behind him holding him up. Bucky, breathing heavily and obviously trying not to have a mental breakdown, was sitting with his shoulder against a wall and a hand clinging to his erratic chest.

As the others made their way to Steve's room, Steve made his way to Bucky. When he got close enough to be a threat, Bucky threw a fist into the air to ward Steve off. He had the instincts of a scared animal, lashing out at anything that came too close to him. Steve held his hands up when Bucky's flailing fists were about to hit him, letting the cowering man hit his forearm all he wanted.

After Bucky seemed to calm down and stopped hitting him, Steve knelt beside the man and held his hands up, showing that he wasn't a threat. He wanted Bucky to see that Steve had no reason to hurt him.

The others watched Steve with Bucky, some thoughts of wasted energy, some thoughts of a noble, maybe futile effort to turn the animal back into the man. They watched Steve try to put his arms around the animal. They watched the animal lash out again, trying to break anything it could. They watched Steve take every blow of the flailing limbs without so much as a flinch, because he knew he could take it. They watched Steve try again to put his arms around the animal, pulling him close so those arms didn't have the room to gain momentum.

Softly, to not frighten the animal further, Steve spoke as soothingly as he could. "It's okay, Buck. No one's here to hurt you." Through his jittery body and mangled breathing, Steve could feel just how lost and scared the man in his arms was. "We want the opposite of that." He guided that fragile head to rest on his shoulder, the animal losing his scared look. The animal was gone, replaced by the blank half of a man with the unconcerned gaze.

In the room where the animal was unleashed, a bed lay undisturbed, a chair lay overturned, and a book of sketches lay open on a desk.


	2. He Has to Try

* * *

Sam learned not to sneak around the tower or to yell things into the next room without knowing who exactly was in that room. He learned that the lost man was there to stay, for an undetermined amount of time. He also knew that the soldier wouldn't stay long just by taking one look at those eyes. With all his experience with PTSD patients, Sam knew when someone was broken beyond repair.

The question was, why was Steve even trying?

He  _had_  to know that the man was a lost case.

"Uh, Steve?"

"Yeah buddy?"

How should he put this… "When I said I would help you find your friend, I thought I was helping you find someone you knew." Sam shifted his weight under the glare that Steve was oblivious to. "That doesn't seem like the Bucky you talk about. I mean, are you just on a wild goose chase with this guy? Searching for something that might not ever be found?" Steve had turned away, leaning in the kitchen counter so Sam couldn't see if he was mad or not.

Steve held his head. "Score's two-two," he said faintly.

"Huh?"

"Pepper and Nat versus you and Tony."

" _Widow actually thinks he can be turned around?_ "

"The people who support me versus the people who don't. And I know your thoughts on Nat. She doesn't really think he can be changed, but she still supports me." Steve turned around to look at his friend. "Do you support me with this?"

Sam just stared back. He couldn't imagine that man getting better. All he saw was another thing for Steve to blame on himself and another reason for him build up more walls than the ones he already had. Sam just didn't want to see Steve get hurt, to set out thinking he can help Bucky get back to normal and end up failing.

Steve turned back around to face Sam. "If you need an explanation, I can't tell you."

"Why not?" He didn't like the sound of that.

"It's..." Steve breathed in and out, his shoulders sinking. "I just can't," he said, looking away.

Sam raised and lowered his eyebrows. "Could you explain to anyone?"

Steve started fidgeting, moving his mouth a lot and rubbing his palms with his fingers. "I don't know. I can't imagine talking about it to anyone." He was rushing his words, trying to get it all out quickly so he didn't have to keep talking about it.

"You really can't tell me? I'm your friend, Steve. I only ever want to help you. That's kind of why we even became friends."

"You wouldn't understand." Steve said sternly and started to walk away.

"Wait, Steve. Just… Is it worth the price you're going to pay?" All Sam wanted to do was make sure Steve didn't get hurt. There aren't many nice guys in the world and the few that there are don't deserve to get hurt.

Steve looked back at Sam. "For him, I would do anything."

He could see it on all of their faces. They all wondered "Why is he even trying?" They all were thinking the same thing, that Bucky was lost, but no one wanted to tell him. They all thought that the Winter Soldier was him, that there was no Bucky left inside that mind. But they didn't understand. No one understood, not that anyone could. Their situation wasn't a very common one, after all.

Steve saw Bucky in that lost man. He could see that echo of a man, that almost-there, almost-surfaced version that no one but Steve knew. He had to try to get that man back to the surface. That man that he grew up with, fought with, that man he patched up each time he fought to protect Steve. They became the people they once were with each other. No one understood that connection, the frayed strands that attach one man to the other. Those frayed strands that were clouded under years of fog, layers upon layers of fog that built up by Bucky's memories being erased and by Steve being buried in ice.

That fog lifted once, when Steve told the lost man his name and promised him he was with him, until the end of their line. He would be with Bucky until those frayed strands slipped from each other.

But those strands had yet to slip. Steve would get Bucky back, regardless of how many times anyone thought "Why does he even try?"

* * *

"I still don't understand it." Tony was always the one to bring it up. "The guy's hopeless."

"Steve told me that I wouldn't understand. Made it feel like no one would."

"Do you get that feeling because maybe we're… Different?"

Three sets of eyes looked at her. "What do you mean, Pepper?"

"Well… Tony. Why do you try to get Extremis out of me, even though you know I'm stable?"

Tony didn't get where she was going with that. "Because I want to fix you. You're like this because of me."

Sam though he understood. "So you think he's just trying to fix his mistake?"

"No," Pepper waved her hand, dismissing Sam's conclusion, "I mean… Tony,  _why_ do you want to fix me? For what reason do you want me to be to get better?"

He cared for her. He hated seeing anything bad happen to her. He help only a few people close, and she was his number one. "Because I love yo-" Tony's voice stopped, but his lips pinched together to finish his word and to give an expression of realization.

Pepper held out her palms as the three experienced that same expression.

* * *

Most of his days went by with a lot of sitting, TV watching, and eating. Your basic freeloading.

"Aren't you bored? There isn't much to do around here." The blond guy would ask.

"I'm trained to act when told to. I don't get bored. I'm just on standby." Like a weapon.

He could see the blond give him a look and sit on the other side of the sofa, taking the remote from the center cushion that separated them.

"What's this?" The blond nodded to the TV.

He really wished the guy wouldn't try having a conversation with him. "A show."

"About what?"

He sighed, groaning in his head. "Alaska."

"Wanna go to the pictures?"

Apparently the blond couldn't get the hint.

"No one says that anymore."

"Says what?" This guy couldn't be this clueless…

"No one says "pictures" anymore. They say movies."

"But… they're pictures."

"They move." How old could he be.

The blond thought about it. "Fair point."

As much as he didn't want to keep talking to the guy, he was sure that the others were staying away from him, more so than normal. Not that he didn't like being left alone, but  _he_  was being avoided so the blond could engage in oh so riveting conversation with him. They were being avoided by everyone so there was more time for the blond to talk to him. "Where are the others?"

The blond was surprised at his sudden interest, not at all suspecting what he already knew. "Oh, I dunno. Weird. There's always someone around here." The lack of their presence never occurred to him? "Wait, where are you going?"

"To find them." Blondie didn't have to act like he was off to blow something up. "I like knowing where people are. They can't surprise me that way."

The blond followed him through the tower, the both of them getting looks when they ventured down into the "business" floors of the tower. Everyone knew of the Winter Soldier, especially the people of the tower. When they weren't looking at Steve to make sure it was fine that he was there, they looked at him, wondering why he was allowed downstairs.

"Uh, can I help you two?" A thick man asked. The balding man with facial hair had a constantly cautious look about him, holding up his arm slightly to stop them on their search. Not that an arm could really stop them, considering one of them had a weapon of an appendage. He looked at the thick man's name tag, raising an eyebrow at it. "That isn't a name. That's an emotion."

"Sorry to bother you, Happy. We're just looking for the others."

The thick man who shared a name with a false emotion lowered his arm and pressed a fat finger to his phone. "They're looking for you, Tony."

"The birds are up?"

He resented being called a bird. Birds are fragile and weak.

"Yeah. Want me to send them down?"

"You better, otherwise Soldier Boy'll tear the place apart like Bruce if he doesn't find what he wants."

He also resented being called Soldier Boy.

The thick man led them to an elevator and told the blond which floor to go to. He hated elevators. They don't have an easy way out. Steve noticed how Bucky fidgeted in the elevator, how he kept rubbing his nails together and shifting his weight from leg to leg. "Not a fan of elevators?" It was news to him. Steve looked over when he didn't get a response. He was staring at the doors and his face was unsettled, his eyebrows pulling together and relaxing randomly, his mouth fidgeting, and he was closing his eyes longer than the standard blink.

"Buck?" Steve made the mistake of putting his hand on Bucky's shoulder.

It happened faster than Steve could comprehend. Bucky had Steve up against the wall of the elevator, holding him up with the metal hand on Steve's collarbone with Bucky's thumb rammed into his throat, the flesh hand set just under Steve's jaw. By the force that Steve felt behind Bucky's grasp, it was probably good that the metal hand wasn't the one holding his neck. It wouldn't have been so gentle in comparison.

Steve couldn't move his head, but that didn't stop him from looking at Bucky. Panic. Fear. Like before, he was an animal acting on instinct, lashing out at anything that got too close. He realized then that he needed to be more cautious with Bucky, make his intentions clear before he did something. A little late to come to that conclusion.

The elevator dinged and opened. The men inside didn't get out.

Once Bucky's breathing calmed, though only slightly, Steve slowly raised his hand to the one under his jaw. He held his hand over Bucky's and could have sworn that he felt the hand on his neck loosen its grip, so lightly that he almost couldn't tell. Steve pressed the tips of his fingers to the back of Bucky's, using his thumb to peel Bucky's hand off of his throat.

He stood there with Bucky's overworked fingers held by his own. Steve pulled his head from the metal wall of the elevator, bringing it down and level with their fingers, breathing into the hand that he was holding. With that look that Bucky still had on his face, with a new confused twist to it, Steve had to make sure that he was grounded. Bring him back from wherever his mind was and to the current time. Away from the memories of his past, away from Hydra, and to the present. Hydra wasn't in the present and wouldn't be in their future.

Steve didn't notice that he had pulled Bucky's hand closer, those fingers barely touching the tips of his nose, his lips, his chin.

When the elevator dinged again and started closing, Bucky came back to the present and pulled his hand away, almost with a look of disgust, whipping his arm back to catch the door before they closed and exiting in a rush.

Steve closed his eyes, wrapping his fingers around the air where Bucky's hand had been seconds before.

* * *

She should have been able to see it.

Not that she didn't eventually catch on, but she should have noticed it earlier. Like when Steve requested to have a lone red star on the left shoulder of his new uniform. Natasha caught it right after she saw that star in the same spot and the same size as the Winter Soldier. Steve explained that he wanted it to commemorate Bucky and would keep it until he found his friend. Natasha isn't an easy woman to fool.

Usually it's the women that pick up on the too-long glances and lingering movements. She did eventually see it, though it should have been sooner because of her reputation. If Steve was that good at hiding something that the Black Widow couldn't notice it right away, then for how long had he been hiding it?

"Steve? You know you can tell me anything, right? We're like best buds now." Natasha hid her real reason for talking behind her smile and light tone. She passed it off as normal conversation.

Steve looked up from his book with a smile to match hers. "Yeah, I know. What's this about?" He always had his suspicions with her.

Natasha looked down, her smile shrinking. "I just wanted to remind you."

Since it was Nat, Steve knew there was something more to her words. He tried to continue reading after she left, but found himself just looking at the words on the page instead of reading them.

* * *

It would take something short of a miracle for Tony to even begin accepting Bucky. No matter how many times they all told him that Bucky "wasn't himself" and "Hydra made him do it," Tony wasn't going to forgive the bastard. If given a reason to hate someone, he held onto that reason for as long as he could, up until teaming up to save New York or being taught a lesson by his years-dead father changes his mind. Only something impressive can change Tony's mind. No half-assed efforts will persuade him of something. Until then, he would detest the Soldier.

Not even signs of affection would change Tony's mind, even if it was his best friend that felt that affection.

"I thought you were  _dead_ , Buck."

"I'm not Bucky. He is dead."

Tony almost walked in on their conversation. He knew from experience that it was a lot more beneficial to stay back and listen rather than walk in and scare Bucky and piss Steve off.

Bucky sounded fierce, though he had no intention to move Steve's hand on his forearm.

He  _sounded_ fierce, but he didn't fight back when Steve slid his hand from Bucky's forearm to Bucky's waist, his other arm sliding to wrap around the shorter man's shoulders. Steve made sure not to put excessive pressure on Bucky's bad shoulder.

Bucky put his arms around Steve, resting his chin on the taller man's shoulder. "I'm not Bucky." Even he didn't sound convinced.

"I know, I know," Steve replied reassuringly, lightly rubbing around the metal shoulder. "Does it hurt?"

He was used to telling the doctors that he was fine so they would just stop trying to make it "better." He had almost said "No," however, there was something different from what he had always experienced. It wasn't Hydra asking him even when they could give less than two shits about if his shoulder hurt or not.

"Always."

Bucky let Steve rest his head on the metal shoulder, the weight actually pleasant and definitely not what he expected.

"I wish I could do more to-" Steve was cut off by Bucky shoving him away. He watched Bucky flee the room and looked on in surprise, listening to the sound of his feet hitting the floors as he ran.

Steve didn't understand.

What happened?

He looked around for anything that could have set Bucky off. He wasn't surprised at all when he saw Tony. "What the hell did you do," he stated more than asked.

"I guess he just doesn't like me." Tony was barely visible from behind the corner.

Steve walked past him, hearing "The feeling's mutual" from the irritating man.

Natasha was in Steve's path, instantly knowing the look on his face. "What happened?"

"He went running off. Help me find him."

They searched the whole tower. There couldn't have been a place where Bucky could have gone. It was obvious to them that he left.

"Dammit, Tony." Steve threw his hand down, then ran his fingers in his hair. "Why do you always have to do stuff like this?"

"Like what?" Tony challenged.

"Scare him off! We're trying to keep him here, not give him a reason to run away."

"It isn't the first time it's happened. He'll stay. He knows this is better than Hydra, so just calm down."

Don't people know not to tell an angry person to calm down?

"He didn't leave the tower before. There's a big difference here." Could he just stop acting like it wasn't his fault and own up to something for once?

"Well it's not like anyone wants him here anyways." Tony raised his eyebrow at Steve. "I don't know what's going on between you two, but-"

"I'm the only one that can rein him in, that can calm him down. All you see is a murdering psychopath. You can't see the flickers of the old Bucky that I can see because you don't  _know_  the old Bucky. No one can see the Bucky that  _I_ know," Steve threw his hand to his chest, "The Bucky that  _I_ -" He stopped himself with a shocked face. Steve put his hand down and looked to the side, his jaw jutted out.

Tony scoffed. "The Bucky you what?"

Steve turned away, speaking lower, like he shouldn't have said anything, "You wouldn't understand."

Sam and Nat looked at each other like they already knew.

Steve changed the course of his words. "I spent the whole time since I woke up from the ice thinking that he was dead because of me. I felt guilty for letting him fall, and I still do. I couldn't help him. I couldn't save him the one time he needed me. And Hydra got a hold of him. No one gets it…" Steve sat down, slumping into the chair, "It's my fault that he's like this. I'm not just gonna give up on him, like how he wouldn't give up on me when we're both in danger. I can't. I  _can't…_ I cannot give up on him. I can help him  _now_. I can't let him fall again."

The Soldier stood, doing what he does best: remaining in the shadows, listening, trying to decide that course of action to take next.

"It isn't your fault-"

"I was the only one that could've helped him and I didn't. If no one else can be at fault, then why isn't it mine?"

But this time, the Soldier didn't have orders. He had his mission, but he couldn't finish it.

He didn't know what to do next.

He didn't know, so he did what he never does. He stepped out of the shadows. All eyes went to him, but he only cared about one pair.

* * *

Turns out, Bucky never left the tower. He went to the roof, trying out some of Tony's booze, though he already knew it wouldn't help.

He looked exhausted, more so than usual. His eyes were puffy and slow, looking like they didn't want to keep opening. He was chauffeured off to someone's old room, not caring who they told him it had belonged to.

Steve liked the room for Darcy because it was all the way across the entire floor, but if Bucky was going to sleep there, it was all the way across the entire floor. Steve reluctantly guided Bucky to his new bedroom with one hand on his shoulder blade. It was minimally decorated and the bedding was black, since it seemed Bucky liked the color. Steve tried talking to Bucky and failed to get a response, awkwardly turning around and leaving. Steve told him "Good night" before he left.

For the first time since Bucky came to the tower, Steve slept in his own bed.

He was disappointed more than confused when he discovered that his pillows didn't have a foreign, Bucky smell to them.

He knew for a fact that Bucky went through his things, but nothing looked out of place. The bedding was the same way as when he made it and his desk looked normal. It was like Bucky was never there to begin with. That thought scared Steve.

For once, the biggest threat to the amount of sleep that the residents of the tower received wasn't insomnia from nightmares or panic attacks. Out of the ordinary, they were sleeping rather well.

But the sea is calmest just before the storm.

Steve heard it first. The screams. Those screams were nothing new to the tower. Everyone seemed to have a reason to be afraid of their dreams.

Yet, no one had ever screamed Steve's name like it was their last hope at escaping their nightmare, their hell. No one screamed for Steve, calling out for him to come save them from their torture, calling out like it wasn't their first time pleading for Steve to rescue them. The screams woke him, goosebumps chilling his entire body.

Once he realized that it wasn't part of the norm for the tower, Steve took off across the floor, hitting his foot when he swung his door open but not caring.

The others were just waking up by the time that Steve threw Bucky's door open and saw him on the floor, tangled in his own bedding and trapped like a fish in a net. By the way the lamps were knocked off of their night stands and the way the bed was moved over a good five feet, Steve knew that whatever was going on inside Bucky's head wasn't good.

It took Steve so long to process everything that happened, the mess of lamps and blankets, the mess of the man trapped, the sounds that were coming out of the room. By the time he could even begin to try to think about what to do next, everyone had already made it to Bucky's room and were trying to decipher the situation for themselves.

"Buck." The room smelled of sweat and tears in a combination that Steve knew was the smell of fear, like rain and salt. Whatever he was saying was coming out in Russian.

The look on Natasha's face was genuine.

Tony quickly told JARVIS to record and translate whatever Bucky was screaming and relay his words into text. Sam and Pepper read over Tony's shoulder, their faces breaking and Pepper having to look away.

Steve lowered himself next to Bucky, who was still thrashing and trying to escape. He could feel the fear, the heat that was coming off of Bucky. He grabbed at whatever blankets that he could and tried prying them off, stopping only when he was punched in the jaw and kicked in the chest.

Bucky stopped screaming. Instead, he was crying, his voice hoarse when he continued to mutter things in Russian. He stopped thrashing, then started jerking his limbs around every few seconds.

"Buck-" Steve's voice cracked from all the pressure built up in his chest and behind his eyes. He didn't want to try to talk again for he feared that he wouldn't be able to keep hold of his emotions. So Steve pulled Bucky to him and held him for as long as he could before he was shoved back by the petrified soldier.

Once he realized who it had been that held him, Bucky's eyes turned from big and fearful to lidded and tear filled, his eyebrows from raised to pulled together, his mouth from an upturned lip to taut and quivering.

"Steve-" the absolutely broken man had to whisper. His raw voice couldn't handle anything more.

Steve pulled Bucky to him again, this time meeting the other man half way, those shaking arms reaching out for Steve. "What's wrong with me?" Bucky asked, a sob overcoming his words, his head going to Steve's neck.

The anguish in Bucky's voice and the way his grip tightened on Steve's shirt made it hard for him to answer. "Nothing that can't be helped." He couldn't even try to hide his shaky voice.

Steve looked at the others, completely lost in what to do next.

After everyone else went back to bed, Steve managed to get Bucky back into bed and just  _held_ him. He had to keep Bucky together, had to make sure he didn't fall apart right there in his arms.

He held on tightly and didn't let go.

He didn't allow himself to let Bucky go.

Not again.

Not ever again.


	3. Might They Know

* * *

Tony hesitantly offered to let Steve read what Bucky had said the night before. He wasn't sure if Tony was joking or trying to mock him and Bucky. So Steve did the most logical thing; he snapped at Tony and went to check up on Buck.

"How're you doing?" They were at the top of the tower, the room where the Avengers finally captured Loki. Bucky never said so, but Steve knew that he liked listening to the sounds of the city, whether to calm himself down or to just listen.

He raised and lowered his shoulders in response.

Steve limped over, a broken rib from last night making anything uncomfortable to do. He tried to hide it, not wanting Bucky to feel like it was his fault.

Bucky looked over at the man approaching him. "Sorry."

"For what?" Steve said when he sat next to Bucky, unaware that he knew.

"I broke your rib," he stated like Steve forgot about it, picking his head off of the hand it was resting on.

Steve breathed out a laugh, the corner of his mouth pulling up in his signature grin. "It wasn't the worst thing you've done to me."

That sparked Bucky's interest.

"Really?"

"Yeah. I mean, besides beating me to a pulp in DC, you accidentally broke my leg once, not that I'm blaming you." The almost childlike expression of interest of Bucky's face told Steve to keep talking. "We were horsing around and you tripped me. You offered to carry my school books after, but…" Steve kicked out his leg, "It sure took long enough to heal. I kept joking about pushing you down stairs or something so we were even, but I never did."

"Sorry for that too."

"What- No, Buc-" Steve put his head down, stopping himself from calling Bucky by his name, "Don't be sorry about it. It was ages ago." Why was he apologizing for something he couldn't even remember?

Bucky looked out toward the city. "Did you let me carry your school books?"

"Yeah. Usually I would've been too stubborn to let you, but I knew how bad you felt about it." Before, Steve would have been able to tell what Bucky was feeling, and often what he was thinking. Before, he could've told a joke to get him to smile to prove to him that Steve was right as rain. But Steve just couldn't read Bucky. He couldn't read him, so Steve had to ask what was going on inside that head. "Was that the first time you tried sleeping?"

Steve couldn't read Bucky, but Bucky could read Steve. He knew Steve would ask that the moment he looked at the blond. "Yeah. Normally I just pass out when I need to." Bucky looked away again, "I haven't tried sleeping in a long time and now you know why." He wasn't saying that to get sympathy from the man. He hated sympathy. He was just stating a fact.

Steve heard what Bucky meant and chose not to pursue the subject further.

"They think I'm a pansy, you know."

Steve's head snapped to Bucky. That reminded him of what Tony may have been insinuating before Steve went to check up on Bucky. "What? Did they say something to you?"

"They don't have to. I can see it in their faces."

"You aren't the type to really care about what others think."

"I can't just ignore it," Bucky said as he stood. "I can see what they think about me. They see a weak little thing. I mean," he walked over to the big window on the right of the room, "No real man cries in front of others."

"Wha- Bucky, that's-" Steve caught himself again. "They sympathize with you. There's a difference." Was sympathy that alien to him?

"I don't want their sympathy. Sympathy means someone feels bad for some weak little broken thing." Bucky turned to Steve, holding his hand in front of his chest, indicating himself, "I'm not weak, so I don't want their sympathy."

Right then, Steve wished that he read what Tony had JARVIS translate.

"Do you remember anything that you said last night?"

Bucky hesitated, looking puzzled for not remembering what he had said. "No," he breathed out, shaking his head and not looking at Steve.

"If you did, you wouldn't be rejecting sympathy from anyone."

Steve didn't have to know what Bucky said for him to know that it wasn't good. The faces of the people reading was enough for him.

* * *

A few days later, Steve went to check up on Bucky again. The door to his room was open, so Steve took that as an open invitation. He leaned up against the door frame with his arms crossed, watching Bucky on the laptop that was loaned to him. The desk under the device was turned ninety degrees from its original position, the front of the desk facing the door. This way, no one could look over his shoulder and see what he was doing.

"Hey," Steve greeted, his eyes wandering to the perfectly made bed.

If Steve knew anything about Bucky, he knew that his best friend never made his bed and never let anyone besides Steve make it for him.

"You haven't slept since then."

Bucky finished what he was doing and closed his laptop. "No," he responded when he walked out.

"Do you think you need someone's help?" On top of the whole unknown factor with brain damage, not sleeping can't possibly be a good thing to add into the mix. He needed a psych evaluation and probably some medication to help him sleep.

Bucky stopped right in his tracks.

He turned to Steve, a very questionable, unamused look on his face.

"You want," Bucky said, slowly, "To help me sleep," he finished, calculating.

Just because Steve has the worst luck that any person could ever have, Tony decided to walk in right when Bucky spoke.

Bucky may not have looked amused, but Tony was quite entertained.

"Wait, that's not what-"

"So does this mean that Darcy gets her room back?"

Steve was never good at hiding a blush.

"That is  _not_ what I meant." Steve tried holding his head high and acting like his face hadn't gotten substantially darker.

For once, Tony and Bucky had something in common; the look they shared.

The blushing Steve was forgotten when JARVIS interrupted.

"Sir, we have a problem."

Tony looked to his phone, then to Steve.

"What is it?" Steve's blush was gone.

"It's Hydra, isn't it?"

They looked at Bucky, who didn't seem surprised in the least. He looked like it was old news to him.

" _Did he already know?"_

"Get to the House," Tony told Steve and called Pepper to make sure she was safe in Malibu.

"Come on." Steve took Bucky's wrist and pulled him along, only getting some retaliation.

"What- Why?"

"You do what Tony says when it sounds like something bad is coming. He doesn't get concerned all that often."

The entire building was scrambling, preparing for whatever was coming. Steve ran into a few people on their way downstairs, pushing past people headed in the opposite direction as them. Bucky was unmoved by whoever ran into him, glaring at them to move when they looked at him like it was his fault.

Under the tower was the House, the bunker used for situations where it was thought to be needed. When Tony told someone to go there, they didn't question him and they knew to stay there until he came to say everything was fine.

"How big is this place?" Bucky asked after they exited a wretched elevator.

Steve saw the look he had after they got out of the elevator. "Big enough."

"Are you going to help?" That wasn't the question that Bucky was really asking.

Steve knew what he meant. Tony already told Steve not to leave Bucky alone, not that Tony telling him to would have changed anything.

"I'm not going anywhere."

Steve did surveillance checks on the monitors in the House in between the time that he wasn't getting messages from Pepper, asking if everyone, namely Tony, was alright.

"You know they're not here for me. They don't even know I'm here." Bucky told Steve when he rolled on his chair from one monitor to another.

"Yeah, well, that's why we're down here," Steve turned around in his chair, "To make sure they don't find you here." Steve spun his chair around so he was facing Bucky instead if the monitors.

Bucky looked behind Steve, at the screens. "Has it changed much?"

"What, combat? No. I've gotten used to it, actually."

"That's not what I meant. I mean… New York. Has New Yorkchanged much?" Bucky leaned back on his spot on the sofa. "I don't remember what it was like before, so I can't see the difference, back when I apparently lived here."

He was saying it all wrong. Bucky wasn't saying "New York" like it was his home. There wasn't pride behind the name. He was saying it like any other person would. "You get used to it after a while. Our neighborhood isn't even there anymore." Steve did a quick check when the monitors made a sound, then looked back to Bucky. "The main thing that bothers me is the Dodgers went to LA."

If it were the normal Bucky given that news, he would have jumped up in disbelief, then probably fell to the ground in a screaming fit.

The Soldier's reaction was a single blink.

"Did I like New York?"

"Well, yeah. You hated leaving." But it didn't matter where they were. Whether in New York or overseas, Bucky and Steve were always most comfortable, most at home wherever the other was. Their location didn't matter. Where one was, the other felt at home.

"Stop looking at me like that."

Steve snapped himself out of his memories of them having many places to stay, but always being at home. "Like what?"

"Like you're reminiscing. Like you're having half of a memory," Bucky looked away, making Steve pay even more attention to him, "You look at me and see someone you use to know."

"Bucky-"

"Don't call me that!"

Steve's eyebrows pinched together, "But it's your name."

"No. It was." He avoided Steve's eyes. He couldn't look at those eyes. "That name," Bucky adjusted his seat, "was erased with my memories of ever being him.

Steve stood, the monitors put into the back of his mind. "You remembered me. You probably can't even remember that, but in DC, you remembered me. I saw it in your eyes."

Bucky remembered that. He convinced the madmen that he lost his target in DC and couldn't eliminate it, so they didn't have a reason to erase his memory. How could they erase what they didn't know was there? They were so confident in their methods that they thought he could never lie to them.

He couldn't look at the man approaching him.

Steve was sure that Bucky was scared to recognize anyone from before Hydra because all those people besides Steve and Peggy were dead. How confused must he have been at recognizing someone he didn't know.

Hydra probably had no problem manipulating Bucky into never coming into contact with Peggy or exposing him to pictures of Steve. Hydra assumed that a face-to-face encounter was not likely at all. After all, Steve wasn't supposed to survive his trip into the ice. Their soldier wasn't supposed to know anyone from his buried past. No one from his past should have lived long enough to trigger a memory.

But then, why send him on a mission to kill Steve? Were they that confident that he wouldn't remember Steve?

Steve sat down next to Bu- him, the Soldier's body snapping to the opposite direction and his body starting to follow. He put his hand on that shoulder, where flesh met metal, and guided those trained shoulders to sit back down and to face him. He slid his hand to the Soldier's neck, feeling the skin below his touch move when the Soldier swallowed.

Steve let his head rest against the one with the long, dark hair. "What do you  _want_ me to call you?"

He never was never called anything other than "him." How was he going to pick a name if he was never known as anything else?

Steve could feel the forehead under his move, eyebrows pulling together in thought. "This is your decision. I won't tell you to do anything, and I definitely won't call you by a name that you don't want."

He kept his eyes in Steve's general direction, not looking at him but not wanting to look away. He didn't want the man in front of him to open his eyes to find him staring back. He was on that edge of not knowing when Steve would open his eyes.

Normally, he didn't have that problem.

"Only you can call my Bucky. I don't want anyone else calling me that too."

Steve took some offense to that for Bucky, since it was his own name, but was satisfied.

Bucky saw a smile from on Steve's face, staring a little too long at how the corner of his mouth curled up.

Neither knew why Bucky didn't push Steve away then, but they were both grateful that he didn't.

* * *

When Tony went to get Steve and Bucky, he expected the latter to plow him over to got out of the room. He didn't expect to see the two playing catch with something in their super soldier high-speed.

"We all good upstairs?" Steve asked, acting like everything was normal.

"Uh… _Yeah_ …" You would have to be deaf not to hear the confusion in Tony's voice.

"Good, I'm hungry," Bucky said, putting down the glass sphere that the two were hurling at each other.

They left Tony with one of the most confused looks that he had in a long time.

Later, Tony caught up with Steve, asking to talk to him alone. "Those Hydra guys," Tony started, "They  _knew_ not to look for Bucky."

Steve leaned forward. "What?"

"I heard one of them. He, so that means all of them, already knew that Bucky's here. And by the way that guy was acting, it made me feel like Bucky was  _sent_ here."

That couldn't be right. Bucky said he escaped Hydra. He couldn't have been-

"Don't tell him about this. I'm pretty sure he doesn't want us to know this." Tony slapped Steve on the shoulder as he turned and left.

Natasha caught up to Steve, her hands behind her back and her hair swinging across her shoulders. "So what did you two do in there?" she asked casually, but a smirk on her face gave her away.

"I don't know what's going on in that head of yours and I probably don't want to know."

"Come on, Steve. Did you just talk, or watch a movie, or do other… Activities…" Every suggestion was drawn out, made longer than they had to be.

"We  _talked_ , thank you very much." Steve finished writing a report he forgot to do and started walking to turn it in. "What are you getting at, with  _activities_?" Steve looked at her for the first time in their conversation.

"Whatever two men who've known each other their whole lives do together when they're alone."

Steve groaned at her big smirk.

Just because he was pushing one hundred didn't mean he couldn't take a hint.

"Is that why you never took much interest in anyone I tried setting you up with?" The casualness to her tone went away. Nat saw his expression flatten. "Because you still had someone else on your mind?"

" _Talk, Steve. Don't shut me out. Let me help."_

He took an unplanned left turn. "Not now, Nat."

She stopped following him, watching him leave. "Then when?"

"Set up an appointment for when I actually have time." Steve wondered what suddenly made her wonder about what him and Bucky did in the House. He was trying to get to his briefing and hand in his report, with the tower acting as the "official unofficial" headquarters of SHIELD, or what's left of it ever since the original building was destroyed. No one on the outside knew what was really going on in the tower, and the less that knew, the better. SHIELD didn't exactly have the best reputation with the rest of the world.

The intercom system suddenly turned on, a rushed Tony heard through it. "Uh, Steve Rogers to the residence floors." There was a crash in the background. "We kind of broke him again, Cap."

Bucky yelled "What'd you fucking say-" at the same time that Sam yelped "Jesus Chri-"

Tony shut them off before more profanity could be blasted to the entire building.

The briefing room, only twenty feet in front of Steve, would have to wait for later. The door to the room opened, an agent telling Steve not to worry about it. He thanked them and ran for the elevator, slipping by a smiling Black Widow.

The living room was trashed.

Two chairs and a sofa were on their backs, a lamp was on the floor in shards, Steve assuming that's what he heard crash, and there was a hole in the wall either the size of a foot or a head, he wasn't sure which.

"What the  _hell_ happened in here?" Steve yelled to Tony and Sam, who were trying to pin down Bucky. Judging by the state of the room, it wasn't their first attempt.

"He… freaked out and… kept punching staff so we… we're trying to-" Sam was cut off when Bucky knocked both of them down.

"Quit trying to hold him down," Steve told them, walking past the two on the ground to the third standing himself up.

"We only  _tried_ because you do it all the time."

"Well, you're not me." Steve sounded harsher than he intended.

"Fucktards," Bucky spat, pulling his shirt back down, flattening it with his palms.

"Do you want to try telling me what hap-" Steve tried putting his hand on Bucky's shoulder while he wasn't looking. He forgot it's bad to be in a horse's blind spot.

Right when Steve touched him, Bucky turned and punched Steve square in the mouth. If it weren't for the serum, he didn't lose a few teeth, he would've at least cracked a few. As Steve stumbled backwards, Bucky spun and kicked out Steve's feet, shoving a knee into his ribs when he was flat on his back.

Steve's nose was bleeding and he could feel himself fading. "Buck-"he managed to say before he passed out. He had been looking at Bucky's fist, so ready to punch him again. He hadn't been sure if that fist would punch him again after he passed out.

He stayed there, his knee in the blond's ribs, his fist hanging in mid-punch. "What happened?" Why wasn't he awake?

" _Till the end of the line."_

He remembered that, from the last time he knocked out the man he shouldn't remember. Then, that man fell and had to be pulled out. He couldn't lose the one thing that he remembered.

"Steve?" He took his knee off and his fist fell to the side.

Next, he was supposed to watch that man fall, down into a river. That's when he would dive in to save him.

But where was the river?

Two men rushed to the blond, one calling for someone else to help.

Where was this?

Past or present?

He had to ask himself this too often, with all of those broken memories that try to repair themselves when he comes across something that seems familiar. Déjà vu. Like repairing a snapped string with the wrong colored end.

"He wakes up, right?" Bucky asked after Natasha and a doctor rushed in. "I pull him out of the water and he wakes up. Right?"

They all thought he looked lost. They weren't wrong.

"He'll be fine. He's just unconscious."

"Steve?" Bucky crawled over to Steve, pulling on his wrist, "I'm sorry. Steve, I'm sorry." He looked at Steve's wrist, a metal hand encircled around it. The sight of it scared him and he let go of Steve's wrist. He realized that the hand was his and tried to hide it from his view.

The three took Steve to his room and left Natasha to deal with Bucky.

"He'll be fine. He did survive being an ice cube for quite a while, you know."

Bucky didn't even hear her. He uncovered his hand and looked at it. "I'm sorry."

"It's okay, Bucky."

He looked at her. He actually looked at her when she called him that name. Any other time, he would have either ignored them or yelled at them for saying that name.

Natasha watched him get up and go into Steve's room.

The doctor left Tony and Sam with basic care instructions for Steve, walking out just as Bucky walked in. It took all of Tony's will not to yell at Barnes, expressing his anger with the assassin in a colorful display of words. He learned, before Steve came to the floor, that yelling at him only makes it worse. Tony started to understand how Steve handled the situations. He uses gentle words and gestures, never fighting back against Bucky. He thought that Steve tries to prove a point to Bucky by never fighting him.

Bucky started walking toward Steve. No one tried to stop him. He pulled the chair from Steve's desk and pushed it next to the bed sitting and taking Steve's hand in his own, a look of awe on his face.

No one but Steve knew how Bucky looked before he was brainwashed by Hydra, but they bet that he looked somewhat like he did when he was holding Steve's hand and watching over him while he was unconscious.

Tony didn't want to forgive the bastard for murdering his parents. He can't let things go very easily. But if Barnes was going to stick around (which it looked like he was), for Steve, he would try.

Bucky called to the others when Steve woke up.

"I'm sorry," he immediately said to the man who was blinking hard, "I don't know what happened."

Steve looked at his hand, not accustomed to waking up and feeling metal in between his fingers. "It's okay," he said before he even knew what he was accepting.

Then he felt his nose throb.

Steve squeezed the metal hand, not sure if Bucky could register the sensation. He wasn't sure if Bucky could feel his metal hand, so Steve brought their knit hands to his heart. "You know I've always been used to it."


	4. To Feel Real

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Warning for sensitive material.

* * *

Tony was happy to see his little package arrive. He had it custom-made for Steve. It could serve as a "Get Well" present for the bedridden super-soldier.

"Hey Capsicle," Tony announced and tossed the bear onto his bed, "Came in today. Try not to thank me too much."

From the bear's place next to his calf, Steve could see that it was dressed in black, with one arm covered in a silver material. He picked the bear up, his face getting hot because he knew what Tony had done.

It didn't help that the person that the bear was made to look like was sitting right next to Steve.

Natasha walked in to see Steve's reaction to the bear. It was no surprise that she already knew about it. She may or may not have helped Tony with the designing process.

"Thanks, Ton." Steve was trying not to act embarrassed in front of Bucky, along with trying not to show how much he liked the bear.

Bucky stood suddenly, punching Tony on the arm and waving once for him to follow.

"You know that embarrassed him." While he didn't find anything funny about the situation, Tony on the other hand was trying not to laugh,

"Only a little," Tony smiled, pinching his finger and thumb together.

"You couldn't have at least waited until I was out of the room?" Steve only got that embarrassed because Bucky was  _right there_.

"You never leave his side," Tony laughed, motioning toward Steve's room with his hand, "When was I supposed to give it to him?"

"You're missing the point."

"And you fail to see how much he liked it. How he was trying not to smile."

"Wha- Don't act like you know him better."

What was he saying?

"Oh, I'm sorry. Says the guy who doesn't even know who  _he_ is."

"I can know him better than I know myself." He paused, hearing his mistake. That slipped. Anger didn't allow him to think about his words before his mouth said them.

Tony raised an eyebrow. "Look, I  _know_  Steve. I know the Steve without you in the picture. I won't let you screw him up. He was fine without you, so I don't get why he needs you now." Tony knew his mind was playing a trick on him when he thought he saw a flicker of hurt in Bucky's eyes. Tony knew that he couldn't feel pain or hurt.

Bucky looked away, away from those eyes that were scrutinizing his, and to Steve's room before Tony could without a doubt confirm what he thought he saw.

"Why does he keep trying?" Bucky asked. Even  _he_  was asking the question. "He's the only one who thinks he can get me back to normal, whatever that normal is. I don't get why he's still trying."

Tony followed the soldier's gaze. "He's blinded. And don't ask for an explanation because he's the only one that can give it to you." Tony walked off, realizing the moment he turned away that that was the most Barnes had ever said to him.

Steve eventually was given permission to get out of bed, later being informed that he didn't have to go to the mission briefing (which was due to the fact that he sort of slept through the mission). Bucky didn't seem like he was sorry about Steve missing the mission, not that he should have been. It went fine without him and he got to take a few days off, the doctors wanting Steve to be absolutely cleared, given his history of head injuries.

On his way to another briefing, one he hoped that he didn't miss, Steve heard him being called. "You can call me Steve, you know." It wasn't the first time Steve suggested that Bucky not call him "Rogers."

"It's damn near impossible to find you."

Steve laughed, "You're the one to talk."

Bucky processed that, then hesitated before he spoke. "I had a dream about you."

Well, the briefing could wait.

"Yeah?" They stood by some of the seemingly endless amount of windows of the tower, just out of the earshot of anyone passing by.

Bucky wouldn't look at him. "I'm trying to make sense of it. It didn't really feel like a dream." Steve watched Bucky cross his arms, the exposed metal of the left one reflecting sunlight into his eyes. "You were smaller, for starters. I knew we were both young, because we were in a school yard, but you looked almost too small to be the same person. Some kids were kicking at what looked like nothing, but I got closer and there was this puny little kid on the ground." This sounded all too familiar to Steve. "The next thing I know, I'm on top of one of them, punching the shit out of him. The other two were already on the ground crying and there's blood on all of us. You were watching me punch the kid, your eye all black. These girls that were watching went to go get a teacher because I wouldn't stop. Then I woke up." Bucky looked over to Steve, his silent mouth parted slightly.

"They lifted one of the girls' skirts," Steve was breathless.

"So?" Bucky asked before he could think about it.

"Buck, that wasn't just a dream. That's how we met."

Steve ended up being late for the briefing. He shouldn't have even shown up because he was next to useless, being so distracted by Bucky's "dream" that he wasn't paying attention anyways. There was this guy giving him an earful about not taking his work seriously, but he wasn't even listening to that.

" _What else has he remembered? Is he remembering things and thinking that they're just dreams?"_  Unlike himself, Steve shirked off any remaining responsibilities that he had and headed for the apartments.

"Hey," Steve greeted, scanning the room, "Where's Buck?"

"He's been in the bathroom for a while." Sam sounded concerned.

"What happened?"

"Something's up with him."

If Sam thought there was something wrong with someone, there probably was.

"Go check up on him. I don't want to be right."

Worry creased Steve's face like wrinkles on a bed sheet.

The only occupied bathroom was the one that Steve headed for, lightly tapping on the door with one of his knuckles. He heard the "ting" of metal hitting the tile floor. "Hey Buck, you okay in there, or did you fall in?" Steve asked lightly so he wouldn't upset Bucky if Sam and him were wrong, but not liking the feeling that hung in the air.

He heard hushed swearing, the faucet running, and Bucky scrambling to put something back together. "Buck-"

"Yeah, hold on!" Steve didn't even have time to bring his knuckle to the door again before the man in the room yelled out at him, voice coarse and low.

"You know that if something's going on, if you ever want to talk, you can-"

The door opened and Bucky pushed past Steve. "No thanks."

Steve watched Bucky walk away with his shoulders hunched forward slightly, his left more so than his right. He had a safety razor in his hand, the brand on the end of the handle visible.

Steve's eyebrows furrowed. " _He doesn't shave."_  He turned and inspected the bathroom, the thought of Sam's known record for not being wrong on his mind. What could he have done that concerned Sam so much? It was just a bathroom. There weren't any pills that he could be stealing; any medication that a resident needed went unseen by the others.

Steve was about to leave when he saw a drop of blood on the otherwise perfectly white toilet lid. He questioned the spot of blood, about the size of a pea, but dismissed it and wiped it with toilet paper, opening the lid to flush it as there wasn't a trash bin in the bathroom.

He was nauseated not at what he saw, but at not understanding it.

"Hey Steve, you wanna go stare at another toilet so I can take a shower?" Natasha set her towel on the granite counter top and hung her robe up. When Steve didn't respond, she studied him more.

"Nat." His hand, the one holding the toilet paper, was trembling.

She notice that right away. "What is it?"

Steve turned to her, more scared than she had ever seen him, and saw the contents of the toilet.

After he told her what he knew, Natasha explained what she thought had happened. What she told him angered Steve.

"Where is he." He was so mad. How  _dare_ he. After all that Hydra did to him, how dare he. It didn't make sense. There wasn't a reason for it. How could he willingly do that? No one forced him to, so that means he did it to himself. Why would anyone do that to themselves?

"Steve, this may not be the best place to-"

"Shut up." Natasha was shocked into silence, shocked that the sweet, respectable Captain Rogers would ever tell a woman to silence themselves. She knew that he wasn't himself, that he was just angry. But he couldn't be angry confronting Bucky about it.

Tony had to dodge the incoming Steve. "What's his deal?"

"Bucky." There he was sitting on a sofa, his head propped up on his fist, watching TV. "Hey." Steve kicked Bucky's foot when he didn't respond.

"What?" Bucky snapped back, already knowing what was coming.

"What the hell were you thinking?" He's done some stupid stuff before, but not this stupid. And not to mention pointless.

"What're you talking about?" The way it almost didn't sound like a question let Steve know that Bucky knew what he did wrong.

"Don't give me that shit." Bucky flinched, only an unexpected blink but a flinch nonetheless, at hearing Steve cuss and the anger behind it. "You had better give me a damn good explanation or I'm going to be even less happy than I am right now."

Bucky stood, trying to leave, "I don't know what you're talking abo-"

"Take your shirt off."

"Whoa, save that for later, Steve." Tony was lucky that Steve didn't hear him. It wouldn't help the situation.

"Fuck, I don't care. Take everything off. I'm seeing your skin," Steve grabbed Bucky's arm so he couldn't' escape. "Where'd you do it?"

Bucky shook off Steve's hold. "Fuck off."

"Don't be an idiot. You can show me here or somewhere else. I don't care. But you  _will_ show me."

Bucky looked over to the people standing by the hallway, unsure whether they should stay or acknowledge the situation and leave. He looked down, not at anything in particular.

"Steve, what are you talking about?"

"I know him better than anyone. Probably better than he knows himself. I know when something's wrong and most of the time I know that  _is_ wrong. You of all people can't hide things from me."

Bucky smiled at the ground. He started pulling his shirt up. "It doesn't matter if they see me right now or not. You'll tell them anyways."

When he took his shirt off, Steve saw what Nat meant and what Sam feared.

Red lines, fresh cuts, multiple lines where the flesh met the metal of Bucky's shoulder. The eyes watching knew what they were, one of which knew the lines personally. They also knew that Steve, who grew up never imagining people cutting themselves, was handling the situation in one of the worse possible ways.

"Why the hell would you ever-"

"You don't know what it's like," Bucky snapped, "...To be taken out of yourself and replaced with a blank slate so many times that you can't even remember the people you've murdered or the… the look on their faces when their _lives_ stopped. To be someone's weapon and only their weapon." The blank look was back on his face. "I want to remember them, all the people I've killed. I want to remember what I did to them. If I remember what I did to them, maybe I can feel what I've done. I just… I want to feel  _real_." Bucky choked, but continued on. "I want to be sure that this isn't part of a dream because in those dreams, the moment I start to feel real, when I start to remember myself, that's the moment when they erase it all and I have to start over. I don't even know  _how_ many times they've…" he laughed, a bitter chuckle. "You don't even get it, do you? What it's like to not feel real?" Bucky finally shook off Steve's hold on him. "For knowing me better than anyone, you know nothing about me."

Steve felt the frayed strings binding them together slip when Bucky shook him off.

He had it all wrong.

Maybe he didn't know Bucky as well as he thought he did.

"After you fell, after  _I_ let you fall, I couldn't feel anything. I never really felt anything again until I saw you in DC." Bucky wouldn't look at Steve. He may never look at Steve again. "I know what that feels like, Buck. To be so lost in a world that you feel like you'll never be found."

"Stop acting like you understand me!" Steve was wrong. Bucky looked at him, with what Steve could only describe as hate. Seems like he was wrong a lot lately. "You don't. You understand  _him_ , not me. Not the present version of  _him_  that you want to change so badly. He's not coming back, so stop acting like he will. This isn't something that'll be fixed with time because time can't erase what happened to me." Bucky's voice dropped, so low and defeated, "No matter how much I wish it could."

Their strands were only holding on by the frayed ends.

He messed up. He messed up so badly. Did all the wrong things, said all the wrong words. He couldn't think of anything that would fix the situation. He knew Bucky would leave. He knew that "I'm sorry" couldn't possibly help. It would probably make the whole thing worse. It wasn't like he could blow this off and move on with his life, like what Steve normally did.

Not with Bucky. Anything he does wrong to Bucky just goes into his memory as another reason why Steve could never be enough for him.

Could anything help? What could he do? He would do anything for Bucky, so why couldn't he think of something to do? Words seemed to be his enemy. Anything too intimate would be rejected because the others were watching.

" _He'll leave the tower soon,"_  A voice in the back of Steve's head reminded him. It forced him to act, without thinking, because thinking about things had only hurt him up to that point.

Steve didn't think about the others watching when he took Bucky's hand. If he managed to convince Bucky to stay, they would have to get used to it anyways.

He didn't think about Bucky's reaction when he pulled his flesh hand over his heart. Doing that couldn't possibly hurt Steve's chances of Bucky leaving. He knew that Bucky's mind was already set on leaving.

"Feel that? There's blood behind that beat. Oxygen. Iron. Probably one too many franks and cheeseburgers." Steve took a shaky breath. "It's real. I have my own thoughts, a functioning mind. I'm not part of a dream. This…" Steve squeezed his oldest friend's hand, "This is real."

Bucky looked him in the eyes, unconvinced. He pulled his hand away, just barely out of reach, and glanced over Steve's shoulder. He determined that the others couldn't see their hands and nudged his fingers in between Steve's. "It feels like one."

Bucky couldn't see the hope rising in Steve's eyes.

Steve didn't force his hand into Bucky's, as much as he wanted to. He wanted Bucky to act on his own, under his own power. "Why?"

"It's too pleasant now. Surreal." His voice was softer, in volume and tone, like he didn't want the others to hear him and how calm he had gotten. Like he only wanted Steve to hear him. "I don't want them to take me. I don't want to be erased again. Not this."

It broke Steve. He didn't know how he could still function knowing that Hydra was still out there, lurking, threatening to absolutely destroy the man he-

"I won't let them. I won't let them take you from me. Not again." Bucky finally looked at him without hate in his eyes, "Not ever again. I'll destroy Hydra to make sure that doesn't happen."

* * *

From experience, Steve knew that disinfectant and bandages wouldn't help a super-soldier, so he sent Bucky to take a shower and suggested that he try and relax.

"I don't know how you can handle this, Sam. I've always been on the breaking end of a broken person," Natasha told the veteran.

"I just want to help people. That alone helps me get through a lot of rough stuff."

"Do you think he's okay in there?" Steve asked no one in particular, getting no response.

"It really doesn't surprise me that the Black Widow could break men to the point of no return. You were given that name for a reason." Tony didn't trust the woman, and he was given even more reason not to.

"I break the bad guys. No serious worries for you."

Tony questioned the way she said "serious."

"That is, just don't give me a reason to break you."

"He's been in there for an hour." No one was paying attention to Steve.

"What's that supposed to mean?"

"I don't know what you're doing with those suits. If anything bad happened because of them…" She made a movement like she was breaking a pencil in half.

"I'm going to go check on him." Not that they were listening to him anyways.

"Buck? You okay in there?" Steve half expected there to be rushed sounds and Bucky bolting out of the bathroom. "I don't like bothering you, but given what happened…" The only thing that could've been worse than Bucky sprinting out was no response at all. "Hey, Buck? Steve twisted the doorknob, finding that it was unlocked. "I'm coming in unless you tell me not to."

Still no response.

Steve started to get worried.

He closed the door behind him as he leaned forward on his foot to see Bucky sitting on the floor of the shower, leaned against the tile wall with his legs pulled to his chest and his arms on top of his knees. His seemingly signature blank look was back. His long hair clung to his scruffy cheeks, the water running down his face not even making him blink.

" _I did this,"_  Steve thought when he turned off the water and grabbed a towel.

Bucky's head was tilted when Steve looked back at him, his face not hidden behind his arms. Completely disregarding the wet shower floor, Steve stepped in and kneeled down. "Wanna lean forward?" he asked, towel ready in his hands. Bucky heard him and leaned forward. Slowly, to be sure that he didn't make a wrong move that would scare him, Steve put the towel around Bucky's shoulders, pulling one arm behind him while the other stayed to the side. Steve watched Bucky's face with every inch that he moved. With all the mistakes he had been making, he couldn't afford to make any more. Steve put the edge of the towel into Bucky's hand, the metal fingers squeezing his.

Steve knew talking wouldn't get a reaction out of him. instead, he guided Bucky to his dark bedroom. He preferred to be in the dark, in the shadows where he couldn't be seen by eyes that he didn't consent to. Steve set out clothes for Bucky to change into and told him he would be back.

After cleaning up the bathroom and throwing Bucky's clothes on top of his in the hamper, he went back to the soldier's room and saw that he was still in the same spot, his clothing still laying out on the bed.

"I don't want to have to dress you." Not that he would absolutely hate it. He just wanted Bucky to do it on his own, under his own will. It wouldn't have been the first time that Steve helped him get dressed, nor the first time he saw him naked, but Steve wanted Bucky to do it so he knew he was fine.

Steve stood next to Bucky and pushed his hair out of his face, continuing his hand down his neck and shoulders. He sat next to him, his hand rubbing across Bucky's scarred shoulders. With his hand on Bucky's shoulders, Steve pulled him in close, his metal arm pressing into Steve's chest, and rested his head on that dark hair. "I'm sorry, Buck. I hate how ignorant I am."

Without considering if Bucky was listening or even cared, Steve spoke. "I keep acting like you're the same as before. The truth is, you're a lot different now. You've been molded into someone we both know you don't want to be," Bucky nudged his head into Steve's neck. Steve swallowed, not wanting to mess it up, wanting him to stay like that for at least a little while. "If you decide to stay here, if you let me help you, I'll do whatever I can to get you how  _you_ want to be." Steve wrapped his other arm around Bucky, "I'll make mistakes along the way, like with today, because I'm just not used to it yet, but I'll do anything to help you be the version of yourself that you want to be. All you have to do is cope with the stupid mistakes that I make, and there'll be plenty of them."

Bucky straightened himself, forcing Steve to pick his head up. Bucky pulled Steve's arms off of himself and let the towel on his shoulders drop to his waist, reaching behind Steve to the shirt that was there. Steve pretended to all-of-a-sudden find perplexing interest in a ball of lint on his jeans when Bucky stood to put the boxers on.

"Okay."

Steve looked up, not sure what Bucky meant. He raised an eyebrow, humming his confusion. Steve knew that the Winter Soldier followed orders, but didn't really listen to anyone talking. What he didn't know was that Bucky actually did listen to Steve.

"I'll give it a shot, if you think you can handle me."

" _He'll stay?"_  Steve smiled slightly, not too much though because he didn't want to freak Bucky out with how happy he was. "I've been handling you my whole life," Steve stood so their eyes were more at the same level, "I'm just trying not to scare you off."

"You think you can fix me?"

Steve's eyebrows pinched together slightly. "You say that as if you're broken."

"Aren't I?" Steve gave him a disapproving look. "All right, I'm not completely broken. But just…" Bucky elbowed Steve so it wouldn't seem too affectionate, "Keep me together."

Steve, however, didn't care about seeming too affectionate toward Bucky and hugged him.

Not that Bucky refused to hug him back.


	5. Love of a Friend

* * *

Decide which is worse: leaving someone else's room in the morning with half of your clothes in your hands, or leaving someone else's room in the morning with the same clothes you had on as the day before.

Steve stood in front of Bucky's door, not sure which option he preferred.

One was more obvious, but the other suggested that there was something to hide.

"Just put your clothes on." Steve was startled at hearing Bucky's voice.

He turned, his heart racing slightly and his skin warm. "I thought you were sleeping."

"I was," Bucky said, pushing his hair back, "Until you got your fat ass up and I thought there was an earthquake."

Steve laughed, sounding awkward even to himself, still in his boxers and undershirt. Bucky's hair was beyond messy, one of his sleeves pushed up to his shoulder, and a leg poked out from under the covers that the two had shared the night before.

It was way too damn cute for a grown man with a metal arm to be.

"If you go out there with half of your clothes on they're going to think that you slept with me."

Well, technically speaking…

"Save yourself the embarrassment and put your clothes on." He sounded a lot less ashamed than he probably should have been, given their situation and what he was saying. Bucky sounded so nonchalant, like he didn't even care about sleeping in the same bed as another man.

Steve's fingers hesitated over the buttons on his shirt. " _Or maybe he's indifferent about the whole thing."_

The very thought of Bucky being indifferent to him made his heart ache.

* * *

He had to pick out the best flowers. Not the biggest bouquet, but the bouquet with the best flowers. Steve always strove to pick out the fullest flowers instead of the most flowers, knowing that Peggy understood. " _The biggest bouquet doesn't mean it holds the best flowers,"_ she once told him. She may not remember telling him that, but she understood the message Steve was giving.

He always went out of his way to visit her because she deserved only the best. Steve felt like he needed to make it up to her, to give her this one thing if he couldn't give her more. A quick plane ride was nothing when it came to Peggy.

"Steve." She always greeted him like she was relieved to see him.

"Hey, Peg." The staff always had a vase ready for the flowers that Steve brought.

Peggy looked to the arrangement in a paper wrapping as Steve transferred the flowers to the empty vase. "Beautiful as ever."

Steve gave her his smile, pulling up a chair. "How're you, Peg?" He asked, taking her frail hand into his.

"Old," she laughed, getting a bigger smile out of him. "You seem different." She could notice how his eyes were distracted and his jaw was set differently. His silence to her inference was enough of an answer for the both of them.

"Bucky's saying at the tower," he tried to explain.

"You got him to stay?" From what she remembered, Steve mentioned that he could never find Bucky, let alone actually get him to stay close enough to be helped.

Steve didn't like mentioning it. Like if he said it too much that it would curse them and Bucky would leave. "For now. No one knows how long he'll stay." He leaned forward and rested his arm on the bed.

"You're worried about him," Peggy stated, trying to get him to talk more.

Steve looked up through his eyelashes. "Well yeah. He's…" It took him a moment to collect his thoughts and his breath. "He's so broken, Peg. They tore him out and shoved someone else in. I'm just trying to keep him in one piece now."

"He won't ever be the same, will he?"

He hated to hear that. He hated it so much that he felt tears threatening to show themselves behind his eyes. "No," Steve shook his head, "He hasn't been the same since I went out and found him the first time all those years ago. Remember? When Howard flew us out?"

Peggy hummed in remembrance, patting his hand. "Do you want him back, the old Bucky?"

It was hard to imagine wanting anything more. The only thing he wanted more was to go back and just say "Screw them" and live the rest of his life with Bucky next to him, without Hydra ever being in the picture or them ever having to be without each other.

Steve knew Bucky. He knew his favorite foods, his dreams, his goals… Steve  _knew_  Bucky. What hurt was knowing that Bucky didn't know himself. There was this faded underlay on his face, his smile and bright eyes he always had after they (he) beat another jerk and they ran away. There was this transparent version of how he used to be under the current version of him. Steve was the only one who knew that old Bucky, that transparent version.

Silence, again, gave Peggy the answer.

"Perhaps he won't ever be the same Bucky again. What if he's incapable of ever being the same person again and you're pushing him to be that person?" It wasn't the first time the thought had been presented to Steve. "Do you think you're prepared for him to be a different Bucky than the one you know?"

"I guess I'll have to be. I mean, he'll always be Bucky to me, no matter how differently he acts. It's just," Steve sighed, his voice dropping, "He might not feel the same way toward me as he did before."

"So you're more worried about how he feels toward you?"

Steve nodded, his usually observant eyes inattentive and dull.

Peggy had her own thoughts on the matter. "You love him, don't you Steve?"

He could have sworn his heart stopped.

Steve avoided her eyes, licking the insides of his lips and responded too late, rushing his words. "Of course I do." He played it off as a love of a friend.

"No, you know what I mean."

"Do I?" Age didn't limit her ability to pull off her "don't be daft" look. Steve sat up, clearly uncomfortable, and crossed his arms.

"It's okay," she comforted, putting her hand in the spot where his left a little warmth. "I'm not blind, though I couldn't see a reason for you to show any interest in  _me_ , with the way you two looked at each other."

Steve adjusted his leg, though it was in a perfectly comfortable position. "It was a different time, Peg. We knew how the other felt and decided it was best to not think of ourselves as anything beyond friends." He tried desperately to smile, despite his next words. "We didn't want to ruin each other's lives." Peggy opened and closed her hand at Steve, getting him to hold onto it again. "Then I found you, and I thought we could be happy. I thought I could let him have a normal life." Steve thought that Peggy would view herself as second-best and tried to explain himself, that he didn't want a relationship with her just because it seemed so convenient for them.

"It's alright. I found someone else too, after all. Don't' look so guilty," she smiled, though she herself felt guilty, "You don't have to stop loving a person just because you've found someone else. Every relationship is different, and you never really fall out of…" Steve looked up at the sudden drift in her sentence. "Oh, Steve. Did you bring these lovely flowers?"

* * *

At Steve's current stupid act, Tony shook his head.

"How the  _hell_ does he remember the exact details of a map and how to get from one street to another in less time than it takes to count the number of people that he's kissed, but forget his damn phone?" Tony held up the useless device, knowing it was Steve's by the familiar shield on its cover (which was only there so Steve could tell his phone apart from the other phones). He let his head fall back and groaned in annoyance.

"Why? What did you want to tell him?" Natasha asked, only because she knew better than to disrupt Steve's "Peggy Time".

"I wanted to show him a present I got for Rusty over there," Tony jerked his thumb over his shoulder.

"Rusty?"

Tony ignored Bucky and continued "-but it's kind of pointless when he can't even see the picture I was going to send him."

"The arm doesn't even rust, you jackass."

He turned to the assassin. "You ever going to let me see how that works, by the way?"

"I thought you were some genius. Figure it out yourself."

"Yes, but I still want to see if I'm  _right_."

Bucky gave him a long look. "No."

"You said something about a present?" Natasha interrupted.

"Wow. You seem to be buying  _them_ a lot of presents."

Tony gave Pepper a backwards glance. "Am I not enough of a present for you already, Pepps?" At least he could get them to roll their eyes at him. "Here." Tony threw a plastic bag at Bucky, the "present" light when it hit his flesh hand.

"Wal-Mart. So thoughtful." Bucky untied the bag. When he saw the blue fabric laying flat against its cardboard packaging, his nostrils flared.

"You know," Tony was having a hard time not laughing, "For when you two eventually get your own room together. Steve'll appreciate the thought." The mouth under a well-groomed mustache pinched itself down to conceal a smile.

"What is it?" Nat and Pepper were equally interested.

Bucky chewed his gum slowly at Tony, snapping his jaws into and out of the minty wad. He reached to his side and pulled out a knife, tilting it at Tony and letting the light hit its blade. He took the bag and went into his room to calm himself down. He didn't want a lecture from Rogers about murdering Stark. Not to mention he wanted to hide the evidence.

Just as the door closed, Tony brought his head to his hand, laughing into it.

"What? What did you get him?" Pepper asked and Tony straightened himself, resting his arm on the one across his chest.

"They're boxer briefs with Steve's shield on the ass," he giggled out the last few words.

Two face palms and more laughter followed.

Only when Steve got back later in the evening did he notice that he had forgotten his phone. He shrugged it off and headed up to the residence floors.

"I'm back. Sorry if anyone tried to-" When he turned around after closing the door, Steve's eyes landed on his phone in Tony's hands, Sam, Pepper, and Natasha looking over his shoulders.

Normally, he wouldn't care about that because, normally, he didn't have anything on his phone that he felt would be an invasion of privacy if anyone saw.

"What're you-" Steve had to stop himself because his voice went up a few octaves, "What're you looking at?" he tried again after coughing away his embarrassed voice.

"Just admiring your photography skills," Natasha said. "I knew you could draw, but I didn't know you could capture a rare shot of a sleeping bear."

The minute he realized that he had forgotten his phone at the tower, Steve wasn't worried because he learned that he could put a password on it.

He then knew that his flaw was selecting his password the morning that the first thing he looked at was the man next to him.

"Uh…" Was the best explanation he could come up with.

"And really? "Buck"? I mean, I knew I could figure out your password in one or two tries, but I didn't know it'd be the same thing that your background apparently is." Tony threw the phone to the flushed Steve, who was awkwardly looking around and hoping to find an explanation laying on the floor or something. Natasha bit her lip to hide her smile and Sam barked out a laugh when Steve huffed and crossed his arms, hiding the cursed phone between his arm and his side.

"C'mon, Steve," Natasha said, still smiling but at least not laughing, and held her arm out to guide Steve away.

"Don't tell him," Steve blurted. The expression on his face after he tried catching himself was enough to break Widow and make her laugh.

"I won't," she assured him, "But I really think you should be known as a spy more than you already are. How did you manage to take a picture of him when he was sleeping? It astonishes me."

As she spoke, Steve changed his password, looking up at her after she was done. "I dunno. All I know is I just had to do it." He was going to let that direction of the conversation die out, but the look she gave him said "You had better explain." "He just… He looked like Bucky." Steve shrugged. "I know no one will get it, but no one knows what he looks like when he isn't scowling at everything. When he's asleep, he looks like  _my_ Bucky, the Bucky that didn't have a reason to scowl at me."

" _The Bucky that might never come back."_

Steve played with the cover of his phone, reminding Natasha of another thing to be smiling about.

She wasn't about to get into that.

"So what does  _your_ Bucky look like?" Nat put emphasis on Steve's possession of the man.

Steve's laugh in response was bitter. He turned his back to her, knowing she hated that. He couldn't look at her when they were talking about Bucky like that. Even with Peg, he was terribly uncomfortable. He wasn't ready to talk about Bucky like… Like Steve needed relationship advice.

"I'll let you turn your back to me so long as you give me a really good answer." Her voice was still pleasant. That scared Steve. He knew that her fake pleasant voice was worse than her genuine angry voice.

"I can't describe how he looked." He tried to defend.

"It's easy," Nat sat in one of the expensive leather chairs that seemed to be the only thing Tony bought for the tower, "To me, he looks like he's completely lost and doesn't have the faintest clue on what to do next. He looks like he's ready to break at any given moment." She nodded in Steve's direction, "What did he look like to you?"

Steve rubbed his forehead, "No, you- You don't get it. I can't describe how he looked- how he looks," His voice dropped, like he didn't want her to hear him. "I just know what it feels like when I see that side of him."

Natasha propped her head up on her hand. " _He really doesn't want to say it."_  She knew that Steve gained trust in her after DC. He should have  _trusted_ her enough to tell her, but she still couldn't get him to say it. Nat wasn't used to not getting someone to talk. "How does it feel, then?"

Steve looked at her, then away again. He was stuck between wanting her to stop pushing the subject and wanting someone to listen. "Like… Like I've been trapped in a room full of smoke for years, breathing in nothing but deadly fumes, choking to death, and… and he's my breath of fresh air. I've felt like I did when I had my asthma, and he's the feeling I had after they changed me into this and then I could  _breathe_." Steve rubbed at his mouth with the back of his hand. "I didn't know how much relief I would feel after being trapped in that room until I've breathed that air." He breathed out, jagged like broken glass.

It was the most she had gotten out of him. Like with anyone she wants information from, she decided to push further until she got what she wanted to hear. "What is he to you, Steve?" Nat crossed one leg over the other, "And don't tell me he's your best friend. I know enough to know it's more than that."

Steve shook his head a few times. "What do you want me to say?"

"You  _know_ what." She picked her head up off of her hand. "If you can't tell someone, in this case me, then how are you ever going to tell him?" She could see that he was on the verge of telling her.

"I don't know what you're-"

"Steve," she leaned forward, "Why can't you just admit it?"

He turned around fast, acting before he could think about it, the anger at her not understanding him blinding his reasoning. "Because he's a man!"

The look on his face snapped in one breath, like a rubber band, from angry to dismay.

He felt hot, like his blood was melting him. It was comparable to the serum injections, when the tiny Steve Rogers became Captain America, the living legend.

The next thing he knew, he was out on a balcony (one that was notably part of a completely different room) on his knees, with Natasha next to him saying something with one hand on his back and one hand over his tight grip on the glass railing.

Right after Steve ran out of the room, Natasha knew what she had done wrong, what she failed to consider.

He was never going to tell her. She realized too late that he didn't look like he was about to give up the information to her; he looked overwhelmed. That's the mistake that she made. She wasn't able to tell the difference. She knew then, too late, that Steve wasn't an enemy, that she shouldn't have tried to yank the information out of him.

She also realized that, in Steve's times, there was a collective understanding of faith and trust in people, a different education system, and a different way that kids were raised and taught. In his time, publicly showing more emotion than that of "just friends" toward someone of the same gender was guaranteed to get you beaten to within millimeters of your life, along with a long-standing bad reputation with everyone you knew, everyone those people knew, and so on.

One couldn't think that way about a person of the same gender without fear of someone eventually noticing their attraction and setting out to warn others of those repulsive monstrosities, to warn parents of the dangers to their children, to warn society of the molesters that should be thrown in jail.

Natasha understood, too late, why he couldn't say it. "Steve, I'm so sorry." She hadn't grown up back then, and while modern times by far aren't perfect, they're more accepting than Steve's times. "I shouldn't have-"

He had probably lived his whole life hiding how he felt, wondering if some day he would be one of those people that parents told their children to stay away from.

Steve didn't- couldn't look at Natasha. She could still see how much he was hurting, how much pain he went through in all those years of concealing the truth of his emotions. In just the view of his back and the sound of him crying, she could feel the very pain he was going through.

Natasha knew she couldn't do anything to help other than hold him there, ground him like he did with Bucky.

* * *

He still didn't think of himself as "Bucky," no matter how many times he was called that name. After all the years of being referred to as "him" or some other variation of soldier and assassin, he didn't feel as though he had a name. People grow into their names, become a variation of a name that people identify with. "Bucky" wasn't his name because he didn't live up to the expectations that the name held.

It was odd to him, since he always lived up to the expectations others held, mostly in his missions.

The blond was sitting, looking spaced-out in the main living room.

"Rogers," he called out, seeing the man jump slightly at the voice calling him.

"Uh, yeah?" he stammered.

He squinted slightly at the blond. "Some guy in a suit wants to talk to you. Short, fat, bald." For once, Rogers didn't look at him when he spoke. He noticed that the man was trying not to look.

"'Kay." He took too much care in looking ahead of himself when he was walking out of the room.

The dark-haired man that remained immediately went to his phone, before he could tell himself not to. " _What did you say to him?"_  he sent to the redhead spy.

" _What do you mean?"_  she replied almost instantly.

" _I was talking to him and he wouldn't look at me."_

It took her longer to respond. Who knew what she could've been up to in the middle of the day. " _I'll talk to you later."_

He groaned internally and went to the kitchen for something to eat.

It hadn't been the first time that Rogers avoided looking at him, but it only started up a few days before. First, the blond completely avoided him. He didn't really mind, but it annoyed him because he knew that Rogers would be around him all the time if not for a reason he was unaware of. After that, he stopped making eye contact when they "spoke" to each other, which was mostly him having to do the talking and Rogers giving rare one-word answers and responses.

He found tomatoes, lettuce, and leftover turkey from the night before and started to make a sandwich out of it.

It didn't seem like the man could ever change himself, the way he felt or the way he acted. It was out of character for him to ever act differently, since he was so goddamn kind and righteous to begin with.

A thought went through that dark-haired head, a thought that surprised him so much that he dropped his knife, it slipping from his grasp and hitting the edge of the counter, landing loudly on the floor of the otherwise silent floor.

Bucky looked down at the knife, seeing a tiny version of himself in the reflection.

" _I hope he's okay."_

The thought ran in his head a few times, morphing from concern to a question, a question of what was he thinking.

"Fuck."

* * *

It didn't matter how hard he tried. Steve just couldn't get the thought out of his head that whatever he felt toward Bucky, might not ever be returned again. He felt something toward another man and no matter what era he was in, he still felt as though he was going to be ridiculed for it.

Steve's talk with Nat exposed this to him: It didn't matter what time they were in if one man had feelings toward another and those feelings weren't returned. Since Bucky didn't remember how he once felt toward Steve, he was just like any other man, one that only had feelings towards women.

Almost all of their relationship, their feelings, were based on a youth that one man couldn't remember having. Without that life of knowing each other, how could Steve ever expect the new Bucky to ever feel anything towards him? He couldn't get his hopes up of Bucky, a painfully different one than the one he knew, renewing the feeling he once had but couldn't remember of the man he once-

"Rogers? Are you even listening?"

Steve's head snapped up off of his fist. "What?"

Almost everyone in the meeting groaned with a collective look of being fed up with him.

"I'm really sorry everyone." They all looked so tired of him. "I've been… Distracted lately."

"We know that much, Steve."

He looked down at his papers, ones that he had someone get after refusing to use a digital copy, ashamed at himself for not paying attention in an official meeting.

Everyone agreed to pick up the meeting at some other time.

One of them went over to Steve with a hushed voice. "You need to evaluate what's most important here, Steve." Steve looked away again. "We know he means a lot to you, but we're here to rebuild SHIELD. I know you don't want to hear it, but you need to. You have to prioritize between fixing an agency that's done lots of good for the whole world and fixing your murdering friend that doesn't even remember you-"

Steve hit his fists on the table, ignored the crunching sound it made, and pushed himself up with his fists.

The people who were leaving the failed meeting stopped to catch a glimpse of the rarely mad Steve Rogers.

"Say whatever the hell you want about me and how I'm a terrible agent and there's better ones out there, but do not,  _do not_  insult him. You have  _no_ right to." The man who stood under Steve swallowed hard and backed up.

Steve gathered his papers and left with the messy stack crumpled up in his fist that stung from hitting the table. He walked off at an angry pace, parting the people in front of him like the sea, all of them knowing when they should move for Steve.

The one thing he hated about modern people was their judging of others without understanding the situation. Compassion was going to go extinct if people didn't pay attention. Steve blamed it on news stories telling half of the truth and people on social media sites acting like they're experts on a subject when they only paid attention to the research they wanted to see, already establishing their opinion before knowing the facts.

No one knew what was going on with Bucky, not even Steve. " _If they don't understand, how can they be so quick to judge?"_

Steve had to get away. He wanted to get away for a few hours, do something that required all of his attention so he could forget about the ignorant comments and cool off.

His text ringtone went off and he just about threw the damn thing out one of the many windows in the tower. Steve read the name under the "New Message" banner and decided otherwise.

" _I want to see you."_  Steve didn't think that Bucky really wanted to talk. Steve wondered if he said it like that so he wouldn't scare Steve off (an ironic thought). Or did he actually want to see Steve?

" _I'm busy."_ He decided to text back.

" _Bullshit."_

Steve sighed and, unlike what most people  _should_ do, stopped walking to text Bucky. " _We'll go for a ride then. Need to get my mind off of the people here."_

" _Hopefully you don't mean on your bike."_

They met in the underground parking lot and took one of the building's trucks out of town, just to drive and drive. Through the country roads, Steve drove while Bucky sat in the passenger side looking out the window. The radio was on and it still amazed Steve that there weren't any commercials. Neither of the could really recognize any of the music, so Steve just put it on a station with soft singing and few instruments. It was the closest thing to what he liked: simple and truthful.

Bucky's phone rang and he shut the damn thing off. "Natasha talked to me."

Steve breathed slowly in and out, trying not to freak out in case she didn't tell Bucky what he feared she did. "Oh yeah? What did she say?"

"That she had to be quick because she was going to meet a friend," Bucky swung his head over in Steve's direction, "And why you're being so awkward around me."

Steve's heart beat a little faster. He didn't think that Bucky even noticed that, or cared for that matter. " _Wait, who says that he cares?"_ "And?"

"She told me what you would want me to hear," Bucky changed the song, which Steve would have changed if he didn't, "Telling me half of the truth and being non-specific."

Not that Steve would know what Nat told him from that information.

"She said that you're treading lightly, that you don't want to make a wrong move with me."

Well, she wasn't wrong.

"But knowing how she works, that isn't the whole truth."

A silence went by, allowing Steve to think before he responded. He could feel that Bucky was waiting for an answer. Steve spoke quickly, which he didn't intend to do and wished that he didn't, "What do you want me to say?" His answer came out in a breath as a whisper. He asked that question a few days ago, too, and didn't like the results.

Steve braced for Bucky's answer.

"What do you  _need_ to say?"

He didn't expect that.

He couldn't- There's a difference between a need to say something and knowing when it's the right time to say it.

A song came on to fill the silence, starting with a piano, then the singer. The man sung of loving someone wholly, the good and the bad of them, loving all of that person. He's there for the person for everything that they go through. It surprised Steve how similar it was to him, the man singing about his distraction, singing about how they began and ended together, how they would risk everything for each other. Steve listened to the song, his grip on the steering wheel at an unhealthy level. He blinked a lot, licking and biting at his lips when he realized how much his face had shown that the song was telling what needed to be said.

Neither of them wanted to change the song, to acknowledge the message that it held, in case the other might not have noticed. Changing the song would bring the meaning to attention and possibly let the other know why they wanted to change it.

They drove, without Bucky's question being answered by Steve, and both of them hearing the song's message.

Bucky broke the silence. "Stop somewhere."

"Uh, sure." He was going to ask why, but Steve just listened and pulled off the road and parked at the foot of a hill.

Bucky unbuckled and got out, leaving Steve to be unsure if he should follow. His arm was reflecting the sun over all of its curves and dips, his head jerking toward the hill and indicating for Steve to follow. Steve hopped out of the truck and jogged to catch up to Bucky, who was halfway up the hill. "Why'd you wanna stop?" Steve asked, shielding his eyes from the sun with his hand until they adjusted to the change.

"You can't drive and talk." Bucky sat down on the other side of the hill, the side facing away from the road.

"Gee, thanks. I'm only concerned about not crashing." Steve was actually smiling. He sat by Bucky, but not too close.

"You really piss me off, you know." Bucky leaned back on his hands, his legs straight out in front of him. "You and everyone else who acts like I'm going to implode if they say the wrong thing."

Steve had one leg flat against the ground, the other one pulled up with his arm over his knee. "We're just trying not to make you worse. We just want to help."

"Did you ever think that it would help if you just acted normally around me?"

No, no he hadn't.

He was mostly concerned with not setting Bucky off, with not making the damage worse. Like with a fracture in glass. He didn't want to drive over any bumps.

"I want you to act like you normally do around Bucky." He was saying it like they weren't the same person.

"What do you mean?"

Bucky looked over his shoulder at Steve, light reflecting off of his arm and on his face. "Treat me like you did before…" he held up that metal arm, "This." He put his arm back down and looked ahead of himself. "I don't remember how we were before, and I won't miraculously remember one day, either, but I still want to know how I was before Hydra."

Right away, without a second thought, Steve knew he couldn't do that.

There was no way of Bucky remembering how they  _really_ acted before Hydra took him, he said so himself. Steve couldn't just start randomly hugging him, sneaking into bed with him, sharing long looks and then laughing together… He couldn't act completely normal around Bucky. That would just freak him out, probably even scare him off. It took a long time to find Bucky. Steve wasn't about to screw that up.

"So, you're giving me permission to…" He left the end of his statement open for Bucky to fill in the blank.

Bucky didn't look back at Steve, but he didn't have to for Steve to see his forehead move his eyebrows and his mouth part slightly in confusion.

Never had he been the one to give permission to someone to do anything to him. He never had a say in what was done to him. That concept was new to his old mind.

"Don't think about hurting me or triggering me or any of that shit. Quit being so damn cautious around me." He felt on edge when Steve did. "I just want to be me again. And since you're the only person who knows who I was, you're going to have to show me how. Do whatever you used to do and I'll follow suit. I'll mold myself around how you treat me and what you tell me to do."

Steve didn't understand it. Bucky was putting so much trust into someone who had, thus far, only made him have breakdowns. "I'm better at  _taking_ orders, anyways." Bucky put his hands behind his head and laid down. "And from what I know, you're better at giving orders rather than taking them.

If only he knew what the hell he was  _saying_.

"Why?" Steve still didn't understand it. "Why did you change your mind all of a sudden?"

Bucky hesitated, then opened his mouth. Before he could speak, Steve added, "And be honest. You're always honest with me."

He closed his mouth again, thinking. "I wanted to live up to the name. You shouldn't be calling me Bucky if I don't even act like him."

"You're trusting me to do this? This is your whole personality we're talking about, here."

Bucky laughed, but Steve couldn't find what was so funny.

"If you can't trust Captain America, then who can you trust?"

Steve still didn't like it. He didn't want to be the one to reform Bucky into the Bucky he remembered. No one should be given the duty to mold someone into the person they once were but may not want to be again, considering that they don't remember who that other person was.

Steve wasn't aware of it, but Bucky was watching Steve's face with his head tilted back. "You don't want to," he stated to the upside down man.

Steve lifted his eyebrows at Bucky, like he was wondering what he had said, then heard it and responded. "I want to help you, believe me when I say I'll be the first to help you, but I don't want to have that much influence over you. I couldn't do that to you."

"Someone has to," Bucky insisted, "I know I'm better than this. They wouldn't mention me all the time in that exhibit if I was a terrible guy."

It was Steve's turn to look confused. "What exhibit?" Oh. "The one at the Smithsonian?"

Bucky sat up, turning away. "Never mind."

"You went there?"

He shrugged, "Once or twice."

That was a lie and they both knew it.

"When?"

"Before Hydra found me again. Right after the Helicarriers." Bucky remembered waiting next to Steve to make sure he didn't have to punch him in the patriotic gut to get him breathing again.

"You remember those?"

"Yeah. I lied about what actually happened and they didn't have a reason to erase me."

The wind had picked up in that later part of the day and Bucky's hair was whipping in his face, catching in his beard.

"Here," Steve reached in the pocket of his jacket for the hair tie he had carried around for just this situation. He held out the hair tie between his fingers and Bucky took it after looking at it for a second.

"Matches the star. Thanks," Bucky said, putting his hair back into a low bun.

"No problem."

Steve wasn't about to tell him that it matching his star wasn't a coincidence.

Bucky had a feeling it wasn't.


	6. Reputation

* * *

Natasha was happy to spend her time catching up with Barton after his lengthy assignment to dry clean SHIELD's remaining operational bases, the ones that weren't destroyed by the agency in order to protect itself. They chatted over supper and filled each other in on current events.

"So the guy's just… staying there?" Clint asked, twisting his pasta onto his fork.

"Yeah," Natasha crossed her arms and leaned back in her chair, "Says he wants to know more about himself."

Clint laughed once. "Or he wants to know more about  _us_."

It was late when the two got back to the tower, late on the standards of people who weren't either genius billionaires, spies, or super soldiers. "They're probably still awake," the redhead explained when they stepped into the elevator to go up to the residence floors. "You know how Tony is when Pepper's gone and the other two are probably trying to catch up on seventy-plus years of culture."

From what she told him, Clint expected to find Steve and the Winter Soldier exploring the Internet, watching videos of cats or something.

Neither of them thought they would find the two laying on the sofa in front of the TV, curled together with a movie still playing.

Steve was laying on his back, one arm hanging off of the sofa and brushing the rug, the other arm across the Winter Soldier's shoulders. The assassin was laying on his side, face on Steve's chest, metal arm over Steve with his hand hanging limply.

Clint looked at Tasha, who was actually smiling down at them. "You should have heard us a few hours ago," she said, "A pretty heated Russian discussion." He assumed she meant her and the Soldier. Like Steve could know any other language besides "American."

"This looks pretty cozy for two friends," Clint whispered back.

She hummed at him, "That's a long story. It'd take a few meals to explain."

Not that he would mind that.

Clint walked closer to the sofa. "You two, wake up and go cuddle in private," he kicked Steve's leg, "Hey guys-"

The kick was enough to jostle the Soldier. He woke up in a jolt and quickly pushed himself up with his hand on Steve's chest, his metal hand going for a knife. He was wide awake, completely alert, eyes darting around and a protective hand over Steve.

"Whoa, whoa," Clint said to the knife, holding his hands up. Nat uncrossed her arms, taking a ready stance. Steve finally started to stir, lazily picking his head up and blinking hard, looking around with sleepy, wide eyes.

"It's okay. It's just me and Barton," Nat told Bucky, who was understanding that there was no threat.

Bucky groaned and put his knife back to wherever he had it in the first place.

"Where did you even have that?" Clint asked and Bucky pushed his hair out of his face.

"I always have," Bucky started holding up his fingers for each knife he mentally counted. "three."

"You were sleeping on a knife?" Nat clarified. It really didn't surprise her.

Clint looked offended. "Why'd you have it pointed at me? What were you going to do with it?"

Steve looked around, lost, and rubbed the corner of his mouth. "I was drooling?" No one was paying attention to him.

"Does it matter?" Bucky said as he flopped back down next to Steve, putting his head in between that big chest and the back of the sofa. Steve didn't seem to mind that. He welcomed the dark head with an open hand.

"We'll quit bothering you guys," Nat said, not even trying to hide her smile, "But unless you want Tony to get photographic evidence of this, I suggest you change location." The first thought that she had was either of their rooms.

After they left, Steve started to become aware of his surroundings. He looked down at Bucky, enjoying him being so close. The metal arm wasn't as cold as he expected it to be, resting comfortably on his chest. Then again, he could have been accustomed to its temperature after who knows how long it had been there.

Steve checked what movie was on TV and saw that they had missed two of the movies in the trilogy that they were supposed to be watching. He liked that Bucky didn't seem to be awake enough to care about him practically laying on top of Steve. "You don't really look like a guy wanting to get up," Steve said sleepily, moving his hand from Bucky's head to that scarred, mostly metal shoulder.

Bucky was probably too tired to notice how he sighed with relief when Steve's hand lightly held onto his shoulder.

"You don't really seem like a guy  _wanting_ me to get up."

Steve wasn't about to deny that.

* * *

The plan was solid. Naturally, Sam and Widow were in on it and Clint followed Nat's lead.

"Shut up, he's coming." Sam rushed to say before Bucky could hear him.

They acted casually, not drawing attention to Tony, who had a devious tablet in his hands. Once Bucky was close enough for a Tony to start a conversation and it not be at a weird distance, he looked up over the transparent device. "Hey Tin Man, tell me something."

He didn't even look at Stark. He was used to the stupid questions. "What?"

"Are you an ass or tits man?"

He paused for a moment, but didn't give Stark the satisfaction of giving him confused look. "Ass," he answered, "Why." He should at least be given a reason behind the question.

"Come here. I wanna show you something."

He sighed and walked to Stark, who was being lazy and not even attempting to get up to meet halfway. Tony showed Bucky a picture of the back of someone, but only from the waist down to about the back of the knees. "What's your score on this one? Yes or no will do."

He rolled his eyes at the technically younger man. "Yes."

When Bucky walked away, he couldn't see the four of them snickering to each other and silently laughing.

That continued on afterwards, with Tony, or sometimes the others, showing Bucky a picture of someone's ass and Bucky giving his approval or disapproval. He didn't get why Stark was having so much fun with it, but played along just to get his off of his back about at least one thing. It was better to answer right away than let Stark hound him about his approval on some stranger's ass.

* * *

"Oh shit." Tony looked at the notification he got from JARVIS with a pained expression.

"What is it? Did you forget Pepper's birthday?"

"Yes, but that isn't it."

"What could be worse than that?" Nat asked. She knew how Pepper would handle the news. But of course it wouldn't be her that would say anything...

"I kind of put together an event for SHIELD, to get their reputation with the government a little better than raisin cookies."

Sam had to be the one to ask. "Raisin cookies?"

"You know, the ones that look like chocolate chip and turn out to be raisin."

"What the hell."

"When is it? The SHIELD event?" Steve asked since no one seemed to care about that.

Tony looked at the watch on his wrist. "About three hours."

Everyone yelled at him, things like "You can't be serious," and "I'm going to take a fancy appetizer and shove it up your ass," making sure he knew how displeased they were.

"Okay, okay," Steve said, remaining the only one to not flip their shit at Tony, "Why didn't you tell us about this sooner, Ton? Even a day's notice would've been better."

Tony scratched at his wrist. "I honestly forgot about it."

Steve slapped his forehead.

"Why does that not surprise me, given you seem to forget every upcoming event," Nat chimed in.

All but the people living in the tower knew about the SHIELD event, given the title of a charity event for the damages that New York took in the alien invasion battle. The guests, all government officials and higher-ups, were not expected to donate any money. Everyone invited knew that the "charity" event was really to showcase the new SHIELD, highlighting how it was being rebuilt. They also knew that, since it was a "charity" event and some money would have to be donated from somewhere, that Tony Stark was going to give away some of his seemingly endless amount of money. "It's just sitting around, anyway. I can't use it when I'm dead, so may as well use it when I have a say in it," he explained to anyone who asked.

Everyone that knew about the event also knew what the hell they were wearing to go to it.

"I don't even own a suit," Steve complained to the fully dressed Natasha. She had nice dresses in her possession for when she went undercover, so finding something to wear was easy for her. Steve, however...

"Have you ever owned a suit? And I don't mean anything that has to do with a uniform." She took lipstick, blood-red, from her clutch and applied it.

"Well, one." Steve wore it to his parents' funerals. "But nothing current."

"Let me go ask around," Nat smiled, "It's a big tower."

Before she could shut the door of the room, Steve had a thought. "Nat, wait!" She turned to him, a curious look on her face. "What about Bucky? Does he need a suit too?" Steve wasn't even sure if Bucky had to go to the event, or if he was even allowed to go.

Nat got on her phone and confirmed it with Tony. By the way she asked, Steve knew that Tony never thought about Bucky going. She more or less asked, but forced it on Tony because she knew that Steve wanted Bucky to go. "He is now. I'll find something for him too. He about your size?"

"Pretty much. Seems to fit into my clothes fine."

Again, before she could leave, Steve stopped her.

"You want to bring shelter animals too? To see if you can find a home for them?" She asked, her head swung back over her shoulder.

"No... I just... Can you find something for me? To go with the suits?"

"Where's Steve? I wanted all of us to go down there together."

"You really like making big entrances, don't you, Iron Man?" Sam asked, fixing his collar.

"Believe me, if you wanted to see an entrance, I'd give you one. But that's not it. I was going to have us go down and "officially" start the party that way."

"Party?" Nat asked, "Given  _your_  description of a party, I don't know if I want to go now."

Tony smiled at her, finally, finally showing some approval of her. "Quiet, it'll be fine," Tony put his arm around Pepper and turned his head back, "Hey boys! We're waiting on you!"

"I'll be out soon! Go on without me if you need to!" and "Fuck a cheese grater, Stark!" were heard in the distance, from opposite sides of the floor.

"Hmm. I'm not sure who said what."

"It's supposed to have started already, Tony. They can catch up to us later," Pepper "On the Dot" Potts said.

"But I'm never on time."

"How is this on time?"

They, Tony, Pepper, Sam, Nat, and Clint (who was dreading it before it even started) headed downstairs to the main floor where the event was being held. A few minutes later, Steve was dressed and somewhat over the thought that the last time he wore a black suit was when he was burying his mother.

"Hey Buck, no rush, but are you almost ready?" Steve called into his assumed direction.

Steve turned around when he heard a door open, looking to a bathroom where he didn't think Bucky was at. "How do you tie a tie? Widow told me I had to wear it."

Steve wasn't about to answer him. His mouth could only move from its resting place to gaped open slightly with surprise.

He was lucky enough that Bucky seemed okay with going to the party. Steve knew Bucky had to wear a suit and at least try to make his hair acceptable to others, but he didn't expect what he saw.

Steve looked at Bucky's hands, both with white gloves on, that were holding a dark blue tie around his neck, a sad knot in it like it was supposed to be tied but didn't know how. The tie matched his pocket square, tucked in messily but still somehow looking good. Bucky's hair was pulled back into his low bun, not smooth to his scalp but still looking neat, with the hair that normally hung out and framed his face slicked back. Steve could tell he took care into his beard, trimming the uneven spots and cleaning up the edges.

He looked... So good.

"You wanna help me or should I just leave it?"

Steve snapped himself out of his daze and said "Sure."

He took the tie from Bucky, already familiar with it's texture and thickness. Steve knew about this tie because he asked Nat to get them matching suits, as close to the same as she could manage.

"Sure thing, Steve. I'd be happy to," she told him with a smile before she left to hunt the suits down.

"So why the gloves, since I know it was you who asked for them," Bucky asked Steve as his tie was being perfected.

"These Feds don't know that you're staying here. They don't need to know that, either." It was hard to think when he was that close to Bucky. Along with looking great, he just had to put on cologne that made Steve think of a thousand and a half inappropriate things to do to, with, on, below... Basically every preposition to do with Bucky.

Steve hoped his blush would be thought of as just an affect of being in a warm suit.

"There."

Bucky turned to leave. "Thanks, Stevie."

Neither of them could see how the other had to catch their breath at that name.

When they arrived downstairs, the event had already started, with classical music playing behind trivial conversation. Fancy drinks were in hand and even more fancy people were dressed to impress.

"You'd think they'd have plenty of money to donate, looking at how much if it they wear," Bucky was the one to say. They were both thinking it, but Steve had the decency not to say it aloud.

They felt out of their element, surrounded by so much wealth. Only some of those people saw the real world as it is, in the real-life scenarios that Steve and Bucky were part of.

"Captain Rogers," an unfamiliar face was overjoyed to see Steve. Bucky didn't know the guy and really didn't want to stick around to get to know him.

"Hey Martin," Steve was talking to him but his body was angled toward Bucky, "How's the knee? Heard it's trying to force you to retire."

"Meh, I can live with it. They can't get rid of me just yet."

Bucky turned to leave Steve to his conversing. "Buck," He looked at Steve, that damn suit catching his eye for a second. "I'll catch up with you later." Steve actually rolled his eyes at the person he was talking to, but the man couldn't see that.

He stayed by the bar most of the evening, drinking water and eating the food that was out. He people-watched and stayed as unnoticed as he could. It was a SHIELD event, after all, and SHIELD didn't need him screwing up their image any more than it already was. The less officials that noticed him there, the better.

"Hey, aren't you the guy who practically destroyed DC a while ago? I remember seeing videos of-"

"What are you talking about?" Bucky interrupted the young guy. Bucky pried his gaze from Steve to look at the kid. He looked like a child of one of the attendees.

"You know, with the big fight and those Helicarrier things. That whole building was destroyed?"

"That was some other guy. Are you here because your parents couldn't find a babysitter?" Bucky motioned with his hand, shooing the teenager away, "Leave me alone, kid." The teenager was surprised at how stern Bucky's voice sounded, leaving the bar before the man got mad.

"Well that wasn't very nice." He looked around, away from Steve again, to find the source of the woman speaking Russian. "He could've been trying to make friends."

"I don't want to make friends," Bucky responded in the tongue he was far too familiar with, "I'm not here for that."

"Then why are you here? To support Steve?" Natasha knew his answer before he could say a word. She confirmed that by taking a seat next to him. "So you're just going to sit here and watch him the whole night?"

His eyes snapped to her. "I wasn't-"

"I'm sure you weren't."

They both knew he hardly took his eyes off Steve from the time his ass hit the bar stool to his conversation with the kid.

"Whatever."

"He does look great, though. I can see why you don't want to stop looking at him."

Bucky turned on his bar stool, facing her, "That's not why I'm..."

A curious look hooked her eyebrow. "Oh?"

It was worse if he didn't explain himself. "I just... I feel like I know him more whenever he's smiling."

Natasha responded to that by showing her sentimental approval, "Awww." She thought that was adorable.

"Stop that." He was getting the slightest bit flustered. "I mean, he was always smiling before, right? The part of him I don't remember?"

"So you know him better when he's smiling because he was always smiling before Hydra?" It was definitely adorable.

He was wrong. It was worse for him to explain himself.

"I'm so lucky no one can understand us."

"I'm so lucky that you two are so cute with each other."

"Oh, shut up." That was the least threatening way he'd ever said that.

Natasha eventually left him alone, but came back later with Barton and Wilson.

That, was much worse.

"Hey look, he's talking to a  _girl_."

"Better go claim him before he gets the wrong idea."

If only there weren't so many witnesses.

"Come on guys, leave him alone. He's obviously angry about it." Natasha was still smiling so they didn't take her seriously

He wasn't angry about Steve talking to the woman, that's not what he cared about. He was angry about the woman batting her eyelashes at him like she was a treat to look at and trying too hard to laugh at everything he said whether it was funny or not and fucking  _putting her hand on his arm_ and-

They were looking at him. Like they were anticipating that he was going to do something.

"What?" he snapped.

"You could probably melt salt with that glare," Sam said.

"Maybe you should go over there and break them up? He looks like he hates talking to her," Nat suggested.

They looked to Clint for his input. He was on his phone, hurriedly looking for something.

"Well? What do you have to say?" Bucky knew something bad was coming, given who it was about to speak.

"Aha!" Clint tapped once more on his phone and held the end of it out toward the others.

" _If you liked it then you should've put a ring on it, Don't be mad once you see that he want it, If you liked it then you should've put a ring on it_ , " played out of Clint's phone.

The three couldn't even try to contain themselves.

Tony and Pepper, arm in arm, heard the familiar laughter of their friends and excused themselves to go over and see what was so funny. All they could see was Bucky looking crabby and Sam, Clint, and Natasha laughing their asses off.

"Did we miss something?" Tony asked, "He didn't figure it out, did he?"

"Figure what out?" Bucky didn't know what he meant.

"No, no not that." Nat gasped, being the only one who could stop laughing long enough to answer. She only started laughing because of Bucky's almost pained reaction.

"Then what? I hate being left out."

"Tony, stop. They'll tell us later anyways."

Everyone was ignoring Bucky. "What haven't I figured out yet?"

Clint, with his hand on his pained chest, was able to point with his other hand and sort of show Bucky what Tony meant. He pointed at Steve, who was looking over at them after all that noise they made. "Take a gander."

He looked over at Steve when Steve's attention went back to the damn woman. Steve had his back turned to them, but could still look over his shoulder to see what they were up to.

Bucky saw something very familiar. He noticed it before, in the "game" that they liked playing with him. Only one ass was shown to him more than once.

"You fuckers."

Steve stopped mid-sentence and turned around completely when he heard the others break out laughing at the same time. Bucky was the only one out of them that wasn't laughing and he looked pretty riled up.

"What?" Steve asked with his eyes, not understanding what happened.

He excused himself from the woman and walked over to his friends and Bucky. "What happened?"

They were laughing too much to answer him, so Steve looked at Bucky, who was avoiding looking at Steve. "Why are they laughing so much? People are starting to stare."

Bucky didn't answer him and got up, turning his back to Steve and facing Tony. "You say one word about it and I'll skin you."

"Are you… You out to get the last one of us? This isn't Game of Thrones," Tony could hardly say because he was laughing so hard. he started laughing at himself gasping for air, and the other laughed at him.

Of course, Steve and Bucky didn't understand the reference.

"Whatever," Bucky said and left their company.

Steve was getting more confused by the second. "You know what, I don't have the time to wait for you guys to get over your laughing fit and tell me what happened, so someone tell me after I get back."

As Steve headed after Bucky, Tony looked at his phone, disappointed at his robot butler.

"You were supposed to get that all, JARVIS."

"My- My apologies,  _Sir_."

After Steve tried to ask him what made him so mad, he knew he wouldn't get an answer and left Bucky to cool off on the balcony outside. Bucky ventured back inside when his arm got cold and started making the bone in his shoulder ache more than normal. The others weren't at the bar so he took another seat there, this time at the other end.

He ordered yet another water when an older man sat next to him, leaving room for one bar stool between them. He didn't recognize the bald man, but he could tell the opposite wasn't true.

"You sure do like taking your sweet time," the man said. By what he saw, he judged the man to be a general of some sort.

"Are you talking to me or insulting the bartender?"

The bald guy didn't like that.

"You listen here," he leaned over so Bucky could hear him, though he knew that the super soldier had no problem hearing him before, "Either you finish your mission, or we'll finish it for you."

Bucky had no idea what he-

He put his glass down. " _Oh no_."

The bartender came over with the general's drink, though he didn't order one.

"Your drink, sir."

"Thank you, James."

The bartender looked to Bucky, who was staring at the general. "Another...  _water_ , sir?"

He couldn't think straight. His throat started to burn, and his vision went fuzzy. Bucky lost his sense of balance and fell back off of his stool, clawing at the glass of the bar to try and catch himself. He was still able to make out the smile on the bartender's face when he fell.

Bucky fell hard, hard enough for Steve to hear it on the other side of the room. He didn't think much of it, other than someone who got a bit too tipsy.

" _Steve_." He heard his name being called out, loud enough to turn the heads of everyone in the room. Steve didn't excuse himself from his conversation and pushed past people, following Bucky's voice.

When he got closer to the bar, Steve saw a man backing away from Bucky, in fear of what was going on. "Buck-" Steve couldn't finish before he saw Bucky reaching for a knife he knew was under his jacket.

Before his vision went completely blank, Bucky grabbed his knife and threw it into the crowd, directly into the general that had him poisoned. There were screams, but he didn't care about that. He was use to people not understanding his objectives.

"Bucky! What happened?!" He could hear Steve getting closer, feel him put his hand on Bucky's face and neck.

For the first time that evening, for the first time that he could remember, he couldn't see Steve. He couldn't see that smile.

He was scared.

"Steve I- I can't see anything." He reached out and grabbed at anything available to his hands. Steve's held onto his hand and looked over at the man with the blade in his shoulder. The man was spewing out his disapproval of the blade that found his flesh.

"Tell me what happened." The music in the background stopped, the people in the room strained to see what was going on.

"That guy. He... It was in my water. The bartender knew, too."

Steve didn't understand. "What do you mean? What was in your water?"

"The guy I... He put something in my drink. He's Hydra."

Steve looked over at the man again, who was still in shock about the knife in him and getting assistance from the people around him.

Having heard Bucky's claim, Nat went over to Steve and Bucky, folding her legs underneath herself. "I got him, Steve."

Steve put his hand against Bucky's neck one more time and told him he wouldn't be far, "Nat's here for you." Bucky took Natasha's hand and turned his head in the direction of her face. He was still unsettled that he couldn't see her, hoping that he could miraculously see her if he looked in the right direction.

Once Steve stood and turned to the man who may have been a Hydra agent, Clint and Sam just had to look at each other to know they would have to act if Steve made a wrong move. They saw how Steve looked at the man, white-hot hatred burning in his eyes.

"What did you do to him." It wasn't a question. It was an accusation.

"I don't know what you're talking-"

"Don't even try that with me."

The man raised his nose at Steve. "How dare you accuse me of-"

"What the hell did you do to him?!" Clint and Sam started for Steve, holding him back when he charged the man. "Tell me what you did to him," Steve shook off Sam and Clint, only for them to take hold of him again. He jerked his shoulders forward, barking out "Now!" at the same time.

The man realized that Steve knew, so he gave up the act. "It won't hurt him,  _Captain_ ," there was resentment in his tone, "It's only to scare him. Makes him understand our messages better."

The man smiled at Steve, looking behind him at Bucky. "We want our tool to know his place."

That was it. Steve shoved Sam and Clint off. They didn't struggle to hold Steve back after hearing that. Steve went to the bastard, picking him up by the front of his suit.

He remembered, long ago, the Hydra agent that killed himself right after Steve caught him. The man he was holding up moved his jaw slightly and Steve dropped him, taking his pocket square and shoving it in his mouth.

"You had  _better_  hope so. I can handle that from you. But if this harms him, you'll have to deal with a very pissed off man with a very hard shield."


	7. The Mission

* * *

Before the party was officially over and the man who poisoned Bucky was taken away by SHIELD agents, Tony took the glass of water at the end of the bar and had it sent to a lab to be analyzed. He wanted to know exactly what it was that made Bucky go temporarily blind.

Steve took care of Bucky and sent him to bed after his vision scare, then went back into the room where the others were waiting around for the results on what poisoned Bucky. Everyone was still in their dress clothes, but ties were removed and heels were off.

"So that was a bust," Clint said. Nat was sitting on the arm of his chair, her shoes on the floor next to her and one of them tipped on its side.

"Not really," Tony said, "We did catch a Hydra agent that had been in the government pushing buttons for who knows how long."

"But it didn't really help SHIELD's image."

"It showed them that we don't take shit from anyone."

"Since when was it 'we'?"

"Enough, guys." Steve sat down and rubbed his eyes.

Natasha punched Clint in the arm and he didn't continue on with Tony. "How's he doing?"

"He can see now, but it really freaked him out." Steve's eyebrows pinched together. "He was looking at me weird after."

"Like what?"

"Huh? Oh, nothing really. I mean, I can't really explain it. Like… like he didn't want to stop looking at me," Steve could hear them laugh at him before they actually did, "I mean, like he wanted to make sure it was real." But they had the same look of " _Sure_ " on their faces.

Steve crossed his arms in defeat and sulked in his chair.

When the results for what was in Bucky"s water came in, no one understood Tony when he rambled on about science things. He ranted to them about not knowing their basic chemistry and biology, to which Steve responded, "Those classes didn't even exist when I went to school."

"And we didn't finish college before we could even walk," Nat added.

"A bit of an exaggeration there, Red."

Pepper turned her head to Tony. "There's two "red's" in the room, Tony."

"What, should I number you?"

"What do you guys think about Bucky going on a mission?"

The room went silent and every head turned to Steve.

He was completely calm, head in the direction of Bucky's room.

" _What?_ " The mom of the group (Pepper) asked first.

Tony's eye twitched. "Yeah, that."

Steve sat forward. "He did just throw a knife into a Hydra agent without even thinking about it.  _Without_ harming anyone else."

"Bonus! He didn't kill anyone when he injured a person!"

"Come on Clint, I'm being serious. He could really be helpful in the field."

Sam laughed. "When he's not having some sort of breakdown. You need to be realistic here, Steve."

They weren't taking him seriously. "I am being realistic." Sam could sense that he was getting defensive. "Think about having two of me on the ground, since he's basically a second version of super-soldier."

Tony rolled his eyes. "A generic version."

"Still. Imagine."

"Don't you think your reasoning is based on… emotions?" She didn't want to be the bad guy, but Natasha had to ask it.

Steve sat back. "I don't know what you mean."

"Look, Steve," Nat got up and stood next to Steve, putting her hand on his shoulder, "We know you care a lot about him. Do you honestly think he's ready for a mission? Don't you think he's still a little rough to be out in action?"

"Rough? What is he, a computer program?"

"No, that isn't what I meant."

Steve looked right at her. "Then what did you mean? Don't sugarcoat it. Be honest."

"We'll be honest when  _you_ are."

Steve turned to Tony. "What is  _that_ supposed to mean?"

"You know you have something to say, but you aren't willing to tell us."

In a dark room away from the argument, an old soldier woke up, sweat making the sheets of his bed and the clothes on his skin cling to him. He sat up, panting, his heart beating fast. He looked around for something and got out of his bed when he couldn't find it. He stumbled to the door, it hitting his knee on his way out.

He couldn't think about anything other than a face, an image that was in his head.

Those eyes. Those hands. They would make him feel alright again.

He followed the sounds, thinking that where people were, that man would be. He found them in what he thought was no time at all, but he could only measure the time from when he felt the door hit his knee and when he saw the blond hair he wanted to see. All other details were unimportant and didn't register in his head.

He watched them, his hand on the wall beside him to balance himself. He was lightheaded. One step at a time, he crept into the light of the room.

"Steve." It wasn't him who spoke.

The blond turned his head from whoever it was that spoke to the shadows. Just as soon as his head turned, the blond stood and moved around the chair he was sitting in. "Bucky?"

His left arm twitched. He couldn't feel the metal itself move, but he felt the clothing at his side move when the hand did.

The blond stopped walking toward him. He silently asked why he stopped. All he wanted was to be closer.

"Steve." This time it was him who spoke, but he didn't realize that.

The blond looked at him, the corner of his mouth pulling up in a sympathetic smile. "Bad dream?"

He nodded his dizzy head. He couldn't even remember it. That's the part that scared him. Not remembering something scared him.

The blond got closer. "You okay?"

That's when he could feel himself coming back. He shook his head, his face twisting into a pained expression.

Steve pulled Bucky to him, reaching his arms over Bucky's and rubbing his back. "I'm here. It's okay." Bucky reached up behind Steve and twisted his fingers into Steve's dress shirt, pressing his face into it.

* * *

Like himself, Steve didn't give up on getting clearance for Bucky to go on a mission with him. He thought it was a good way for Bucky to prove himself to the others, that he could do more than sit around and be watched by people. He didn't like that Bucky wasn't allowed to do anything beside be bored in the tower. He had skills, so why not use them?

"You know who could get that to happen?" he would say at mission briefings.

"I know a guy that could get us some cover in a firefight," he would tell people when they were discussing fighting tactics.

They all wanted him to give it a rest.

Also like himself, Steve didn't want Bucky to know how many strings he was trying to pull. Whenever Bucky was in the room, he wouldn't talk about getting him in on a mission at all.

Then one day, Bucky went to Tony, alone, and looked like he meant business.

"Get me in on something."

Tony looked at him like he was crazy. "Get you in on what? Sorry, go to the lab for your high."

"Not that, asshat. I mean get me in on a mission. And don't pull that "I have no authority" crap because I know your girl hates you being in the line of fire so you've had to take a more official, more desk-ridden position."

Tony hated to say so, but he was right. It wasn't a public thing, but Tony was one of the higher-ups. Almost a Director like Coulson. "You can't go on anything."

"Why the hell not?"

"There aren't any missions for you."

Bucky scoffed. "Bullshit. I'm going."

"This isn't your job."

"You need me to go."

Well actually, there was only one person who probably needed him to go.

"I've already been told not to let you go."

"By who?"

Tony almost told him, but he had his Coulson Filter set for Steve only. Everyone else already knew about Coulson and respected his decision to tell Steve he was alive when he thought he should. Coulson told him not to let "Mister Barnes" on any missions, and he knew that message was coming from Fury himself. Pretty much everything from Fury those days came from Coulson. Tony suspected that Coulson had some input in not letting Bucky go on any missions because he was a jealous about Bucky getting to spend so much time with Steve.

"People above me."

"Someone's actually above you? I thought your ego doesn't let that happen?"

Tony looked up at him, almost cracking a smile, then back down at a report on the current situation with a drug cartel.

He had an idea.

"You know what? I'm going to do you a big favor. You're getting your mission, but it's going to be a one-day deal. It'll just be busting a bunch of drug dealers." Bucky was actually surprised that Tony gave in. "Don't look so shocked. Chances are, they'll have plenty of guns and they could use two super-soldiers."

"Two?"

"Well,  _yeah_. You don't think I would actually let you go somewhere without the only person who can single-handedly stop you?"

Actually, Bucky was hoping he wouldn't have to go somewhere without Steve.

The mission itself was simple, which was Tony's intention. Their main goal was to prove that some guys were smuggling drugs and catch them in the act. Even if they were trying to rebuild SHIELD, things like that still had to be dealt with. It was a mission for lower-level agents, so the other people involved were kind of stunned that Captain America would be on the same mission as them. Oh, and that other guy who broke DC.

"I can't believe Tony actually let this happen." Steve was almost giddy, even though all they were doing was sitting around listening to some guys talking about nothing of importance.

"You're welcome. I'm the one who persuaded him." Bucky was taking full credit, though he didn't know how annoying Steve had been about it.

"I'm glad they're finally letting you show them what you can do. Maybe you can come on more missions after this."

" _Come_  on?" Bucky took off his headphones and let them rest on his shoulders. "You say that like I'm here with you, not the other way around."

Steve looked nervous for a split second. "Well, you know what I mean."

Not really.

After the idiot drug dealers proved that they were smuggling drugs into the country, they went into action. They had to walk a good distance, making sure that vehicles wouldn't give them away. Everyone had to be as quiet as possible, so Steve and Bucky communicated by typing messages to each other on Steve's phone.

" _How much farther?_ " Bucky typed, handing Steve his phone so he could read it and answer.

" _Not very. Few hundred yards._ "

" _You said that a few hundred yards ago._ "

Steve laughed at Bucky, covering his mouth because he knew better than that.

" _Captain America giggling on a mission? That wasn't very professional of you._ "

Steve elbowed Bucky and they smiled at each other. It was still rare for him to smile, but when he did, Steve could feel the connection that they had before. It was slight, but it was still there.

Steve put his phone away and pointed at a column that jutted out from a building. Bucky nodded and they started for it. They skipped from spot to spot, staying as low as possible and checking for anyone that might be able to see them. Steve poked his head out and checked the area before he gave the okay for them to continue on to their next position. He felt like he was wasting his time, though, because Bucky was acting like he knew was coming.

" _He couldn't possibly know what these guys are up to. Unless his training is so much more advanced than mine that he knows exactly what they'll do next?_ " Steve dismissed that, thinking that it wasn't very likely.

Bucky stopped suddenly, making Steve stop. They were out in the open, so Steve had to get Bucky out of-

Bucky grabbed Steve's hand, the one with the shield on his forearm, and held it up to cover as much of them as possible just as an explosion went off. Neither of them knew where it came from, air or ground.

Debris hit the shield, making it shake Steve's arm and Bucky's hand with metallic  _ting_ sounds.

"Fuck!" Bucky yelped and picked up his foot.

"What is it?" Steve coughed. The dust from the explosions was choking them.

"Something hit my ankle. It's fine. We need to get out of here."

Steve didn't have to be told twice. He looked around and Bucky took out a gun, the blond leading the way to somewhere safer.

Steve heard something snap. It sounded like something grinding together after the initial break. Bucky groaned loudly and hopped on one leg.

"What the hell was  _that_?"

"My ankle."

Steve turned around quick and held onto Bucky's elbows to stabilize him. "Your  _ankle_?" He looked around again. "I need to get you out of here."

"No chance of that happening. They're everywhere now. Just keep going."

"Buck, you can't keep going. I'm not letting you do more damage to your leg."

"Just keep going! I'm fine!"

"Like hell." Steve spun around and grabbed behind Bucky's knees, pulling them to his sides. Bucky lost his balance and was forced to hold onto Steve's shoulders as he was carried piggy-back off somewhere safer.

Steve stopped and let Bucky hop off of his back, landing on his good leg. Steve helped him sit down, letting him rest against the wall of a building. "I need to get you out of here," Steve said again.

Bucky rested his leg, the side of his calf flush with the ground. "Don't let me jeopardize the mission. I never let that happen." He never had to worry about someone else before, either.

"The mission means nothing to me if you're hurt."

"Don't get sentimental on me, Rogers. We're finishing this."

"Bucky," there were gunshots, "For once, worry about yourself. Worry about your well-being instead of completing the mission." Steve looked at Bucky's ankle. There was a bone sticking out. He put his shield down and held his hand against Bucky's arm. "The difference between us and Hydra is we don't want people dying. Completing the mission isn't the trade off for a life."

Bucky saw Steve. Instead of looking at him, Bucky  _saw_ him. He saw how those eyes looked at his ankle, his those fingers squeezed his arm and let him know that Steve was there for him. He saw the pain in Steve's expression. Bucky's pain was physical, but Steve's pain was emotional, from seeing Bucky in pain.

He was looking at that spot by Steve's jaw, the part where doctors jab their fingers in when you complain about a sore throat. That spot of skin that looked so soft suddenly. It attracted him like it was a soft blanket. He just wanted to touch it, just by the looks of it.

Maybe it was the pain Bucky was feeling that let him see Steve. Maybe it was that pain that was getting to his head because he suddenly found those lips to be too perfect, too soft like that spot on his under his jaw. He was wondering just how that tongue moved behind those lips, the surfaces in his mouth that it touched, what that tongue would feel like next to his. It was like wanting that sweet dessert, wanting that sweetness on his tongue. It appealed to him. No, it drew him in.

His chest was burning, much like his ears. He was suddenly glad that his hair was long.

He swallowed hard.

"I have to make sure they don't find you."

It took a few seconds for him to hear Steve. "What're you gonna do?"

"I'm going out there. I'll make sure they don't find you. I'm going to go out there and take them all out before they do find you."

"That's a stupid plan." Bucky was quieter for some reason. He sounded distracted. He  _looked_ distracted. His eyes were still on that spot on Steve's jaw, when they weren't looking at his lips.

"You have a better one?" Steve asked, turning to look at Bucky. His mouth was open slightly and he looked like he was desperate for something. "What? What is it?" He thought that Bucky needed some pain medication.

Bucky lost control over himself. He never really had full control of himself in the first place, but he had no idea what his hand was doing when it went behind Steve's head. The feeling was overpowering, enough to overpower his thoughts and reasoning. He didn't have control over his hand when it grabbed Steve behind the neck, just at the base of his skull. He didn't know what he was doing when he was pulling Steve's face closer to his, when he pressed his lips to Steve's opened, surprised ones.

Steve didn't react at all. He didn't know how to react. He thought he interpreted it wrong and Bucky didn't mean to do that. At first, he just let Bucky press their lips together. Steve didn't want to get it wrong and act on what he thought was happening. He didn't want to do something that Bucky didn't want him to do.

Then Bucky pulled his head back, his eyes lidded slightly and Steve felt his breath on his lips.

Bucky looked surprised at himself, at what he just did. He let Steve go and backed his head up. "Shit…" He saw the look on Steve's face. He was too surprised to want that to happen. "Steve, I…"

The look Bucky gave Steve right before that meant something. He cared about misinterpreting Bucky before, but after seeing that look, that look of  _satisfaction_ , Steve didn't care what he previously thought.

When Bucky "died," Steve thought that was the end of him. He thought Bucky was gone forever. When he fell, Steve knew that he would never be able to kiss those lips for the first time, not even hypothetically. When they kissed, that wasn't their first kiss as the new Bucky and Steve.

Before then, their lips had never touched.

Steve seized the opportunity. He kissed Bucky back, moving his head before his hands could budge. His hands eventually grabbed at Bucky's face, holding onto whatever they could, not wanting him to slip away again.

He didn't care about the mission, whether he was going to be shot at any given moment or blown up. He didn't care about if Bucky didn't want that. All he cared about was the feeling of their lips together. That's all that mattered. Finally knowing what it was like to kiss that man was all that mattered.

People talk about there being electricity in a first kiss. Steve didn't know what that meant. All that could register in his head was that new sensation of kissing Bucky, kissing the mouth he was often distracted by and dreamed about.

After he pulled away, Steve noticed that not once did Bucky try to get away from him.

Maybe he didn't misinterpret.

"How long have you been waiting to do that?" Bucky asked, his breath taunting Steve's lips again. Steve couldn't read into his words beyond knowing that it was a question.

"My whole life," slipped out when Steve was still thinking about those lips.

He paused for a second, then let it go and picked up his shield. Steve stood and Bucky watched him. "You're still going?"

"I told you, I'm not letting them stumble on you. They won't get that far."

"I feel like we've done this before."

Steve looked back at him. "Done what?"

"You going off to fight. Me trying to stop your dumb ass." If Steve thought Bucky looked the most like himself when he was sleeping, he was wrong. Bucky looked the most like himself when he was trying to get Steve to not go do something stupid.

"It happened once or twice."

Bucky smiled at him. "Liar."

"I still need to-"

"No," Bucky tried moving over to Steve, "Don't you fucking leave me." He hated that he had to pull that helpless bird act on Steve, but he knew what was out there. The minute Tony mentioned it, he knew.

It looked like that hurt Steve. His eyebrows pinched together. "I need to."

"Please don't."

"I'll be back. I promise. Till the end of the line, remember?"

Bucky looked down at his hand. He did remember that. "Okay, just…" he looked up at Steve, "Just don't need me out there."

Steve smiled at him, turning to walk away. "Not chance of that happening. I always need you."

The kiss was something Bucky wasn't about to forget anytime soon. Right as their lips met, he knew that he would remember that for a long time. Unlike the everyday things that he forgot because he just didn't care about them, he would remember that.

He sat back, watching Steve snake his way closer to the men who were waiting to attack them. Bucky watched Steve fend off multiple men at once, feeling something in his stomach that unsettled him. It twisted inside him like a sickness, feeling nauseated when a danger came close to Steve.

" _For once, worry about yourself,_ " Steve said. That wasn't about to happen. He knew that the nausea he felt wasn't from a sickness.

It was worry.

Between his lips burning from their contact with Steve's, his stomach boiling with worry, and his ankle feeling like his shoulder when the doctors worked on it, Bucky didn't know what to think or feel. He was confused to be feeling so many things at the same time. He was so used to not feeling anything that multiple sensations at once was dulling his senses, his reasoning.

Then someone who Steve was fighting hit him on the head, right in the temple. He was wearing his helmet, but it didn't soften the blow. Bucky knew about a program that gave soldiers pseudo strength through an attachment to their bodies. The guy that hit Steve in the head must have used Centipede. He dropped Steve right there.

Bucky felt like throwing up, acid gnawing at his stomach.

He was trying to call out for Steve, but all that came out was gasps and puffs of air. His chest was shaking from his failed attempts to form words. He grabbed at his gun, dropping it a few times before he finally took hold of it, hands shaky, not in control.

Bucky jumped up on his good leg. He used all the power in it to force himself forward, toward Steve, unconscious on the ground. There were men gathering around him, pointing their guns at him and kicking him, making him roll over or one of his limbs jutting out in an unnatural position. He had to get to Steve quicker, so he used his bad leg to plunge forward even faster. It hurt. He could feel his skin tearing where the bone was ripping could feel the bone grinding together.

The one thing that overpowered that feeling shooting through his leg was getting to Steve and making sure he was safe.

Bucky shot at them, killing three instantly and injuring another two. The shots from his gun offset his balance, making him stumble and crash onto his knees. But he pushed on. He had to push on. It was the only thing he could think of doing, getting to him.

" _Steve."_

He was hit behind the knee on the good leg when he got closer to Steve. It sent him down, restricting his mobility to a crawl. Scrambling to him, scraping at the ground with metal and flesh hand, Bucky covered as much of Steve's head and chest with the shield. He covered the rest of Steve as well as he could with his own body. Next to Steve on the ground, they were sitting ducks. All Bucky could do was cover Steve and hope that backup came soon. Never did he try to count how many times he had been shot. It felt like there wasn't an inch of his body that wasn't covered in some sort of scrape or had a bullet in it. All he cared about was how many times Steve was hit.

A bullet hit his shoulder, being the last of their attempts to disable his metal arm. They knew where to shoot to demobilize that arm.

It fell, dead weight at his side. With it fell the shield that it was holding. Someone got a shot off that snuck underneath the shield and hit Steve, going through him and entering Bucky. His vision was starting to go and he knew that he only had a few bullets left. Bucky reached over Steve and pinched something in his wrist, making the hand clamp onto the handle of the shield. He propped his arm and the shield up as best as he could and shot the remainders of his bullets.

Once he was out, he felt the rest of him starting to fade. Bucky remembered when he couldn't see Steve, snapping his head to the man to make sure he was the last thing his failing vision would see. He put his hand on Steve's chest to be sure that he was still there. After his vision went followed his sense of feeling. He couldn't feel the shots that hit him or the feeling of the man under his arm. The second one was the one that scared him. The last thing to go before he slipped into a nothingness was his hearing. Just before that nothingness, he heard an increase of gunfire, an increase of people.

He could only hope that they were there to help Steve, since his own body was failing to do anything to help.


	8. The Trust is Turning

* * *

The team didn't take long to locate them, acting quickly after finding out that the drug cartel was a façade. It was really Hydra transporting more of its biological weaponry. Once SHIELD knew this, they sent out their best to go and find Steve.

"What the hell happened here?" Sam asked Nat, looking at the crater that was in between buildings.

"Apparently they didn't like what they saw."

One of the men called out that he found them and the two went running. As they approached the team that was gathering, Sam and Nat saw an increase in the density of bodies.

"There was only the two of them. How could they have dropped this many guys?"

Nat had a thought. "Desperation."

When they got to the team, Clint was already there. Given who went on the mission initially, they knew that Hawkeye and Widow would be needed in case a certain person went out of control.

"I still don't like the guy, but it looks like he was protecting Steve." Clint said as they approached.

They laid in a pool of their mixed blood.

Bucky had the most injuries. He was laying next to Steve, shielding him with his body draped over the other unconscious man. Steve was on his back and Bucky was laying partially on Steve with his chest facing the ground. The team was trying to take Bucky's hand off of the shield that was covering Steve.

Bucky's fingers were bleeding. "Was he scraping them against the ground?" From the path of blood on the ground that led to them, it looked like he had dragged his body to Steve. It was possible that he tore up the tips of his flesh fingers trying to get to Steve.

"It seems that his hand is locked onto the shield," an agent told them. The problem was, with Bucky holding the shield, and Steve's arm was still in it, they couldn't get the two separated.

Clint groaned and looked away. "Just cut off Steve's arm and he can have a metal one too."

Apparently, Bucky heard that.

Sam and Nat jumped slightly when Bucky suddenly pulled out a knife and sort of sat up, covering up Steve more and holding his arm over him. He looked around like he didn't know that he already took out all the enemies.

"Whoa ," Clint said, familiar with the knife, "How come you're always pulling a knife out on me?"

Bucky groaned and fell back, the rocks on the ground pressing uncomfortably into his back, closing his eyes for a moment before remembering that Steve was next to him and he wasn't awake. He turned over and put his hand on Steve's chest, feeling that his heart was still beating and feeling his chest rise with his breaths.

He noticed the people by the shield next, looking at them like they were nothing. "You want me to let go?" Bucky didn't let them answer and reached up with his other hand, feeling his wrist and moving something in it, releasing his hand that fell limply by Steve's shoulder.

The shield fell and Bucky rolled over, lifting up his leg and holding onto it at his knee to keep it up.

"Holy shit, your leg!"

"I noticed," Bucky said, aggravated at the idiot who spoke, whoever the guy was.

They tended to his leg and got them both on stretchers. When they tried to separate them to be transported back to the tower for treatment, Bucky looked at them and picked up his metal arm, placed it on Steve's wrist, and made it clamp down. He dared them to have the two separated.

He wasn't even challenged.

Tony and Pepper were waiting at the medical center attachment of the tower for Steve and Bucky, honestly only really caring about Steve.

"This is why you  _listen_ to them, Tony."

Tony ignored her because the doors to the center opened, with Bucky going through first and Steve rolling in second. Bucky, of course, had too much pride to use a gurney and thought it was better for his health to hobble in on a crutch. He had one crutch because the other arm seemed to be useless, swinging limply at his side. He was crutching along next to Steve's gurney, not saying a word and keeping his eyes on the senseless man.

"How the hell did this happen?" Tony rubbed his beard. It was supposed to be an easy mission. It  _shouldn't_ have gone so wrong. Where  _did_ it go wrong?

They wouldn't let Bucky go with Steve when he was rolled off for surgery. "You need to go into surgery too," a doctor told him, "There's God know's how many bullets in you right now and your body is trying to heal itself around them."

Bucky was silent. He just looked on through the glass doors.

"Sir?"

Bucky turned to the doctor, to Tony and Pepper, to the other three that were entering. "Don't waste anything on me. If there's a better doctor, give them to him." He was more pale than they thought he could be, with the off-brand serum in his system. "I'm not the one that matters here."

Natasha stepped in. "You're the more-injured one. Do you think he would want you to refuse treatment?"

He looked at her, then back to the doors. "They aren't putting me to sleep. Waking up with new limbs isn't fun."

Bucky let them take out all nine of the bullets, stitch him up, and fix up his snapped ankle. His arm was the only thing that he refused to have them touch. The only thing he allowed them to do to it was put it in a sling.

"At least let me take a look at it," Tony said when they were waiting for Steve to get out of surgery. He had a few bullets in him, but they were in very dangerous areas and required a lot of time and care to get to.

"No. No one's touching it." Bucky had reason not to trust anyone with his arm.

Tony looked down at the man, who finally agreed to sit his stubborn ass down. "It'll never get fixed that way. You're just going to let it sit there and be useless?" He nodded and crossed his arms. "Well you didn't break it for nothing."

Bucky exhaled. "You're right," He looked up at Tony, staring him right in the eye, "I did it for him."

The first thing Steve noticed was feeling himself laying in a bed. At first, he thought he was laying in his bed, waking up after a good night's sleep. For a second, he thought he remembered having a good dream about Bucky. When he opened his eyes and saw a darkened, unfamiliar room around him, he was confused. He knew that he somehow was knocked out and was at some hospital, given that he had an IV in his arm and a heart-rate monitor going.

Before he tried to see if anyone was around to tell him what happened, he heard Bucky talking.

"Imagine if I wasn't there. Steve might not have gotten out of there with us. You guys like to think that you have such a great hold on things, but there's still a lot that you don't know." Steve was too out of himself to understand Bucky. Even if he was in perfect health, he may not have understood what Bucky meant.

He wasn't the only one that didn't understand.

"Just let me see him."

Nat responded, trying to be persuasive. "No, you need to sit down. Otherwise you'll do more damage to your leg." It sounded like Bucky inflicted damage to himself already. How could that have happened?

"It's fine. It's already healing." Steve heard the lie. "Let me see him. It's not like I'm going to start running on it. I'll calmly walk there." They must not have been far if Steve was able to hear them.

"You can see him," Tony started, "If you let me look at your arm."

"Fuck off."

"Geez. That's hostile."

There was a pause, which Steve assumed meant that Bucky was glaring at him.

"They'll let you in soon." For once, Clint was being reassuring. "Just take it easy, Bucky."

"Don't call me that! Only Steve can call me-" Bucky stopped himself before he said anything worse. It was worse for him to want to stop talking. "Give me the crutch," he said, lower that time.

There was a silence before anyone responded. "We don't want you to hurt yourself."

"What do I keep saying…  _I_  don't matter." He got quieter as he spoke. "I'm just the soldier that does as he's told. I don't compare to-"

"Bucky?" Steve called out, wanting to be next to him and wanting him to stop saying that he wasn't important. It hurt him to hear Bucky say that.

If he was so unimportant, then how come he was Steve's whole world?

Steve heard a weird scrambling, an awkward, fast transition between a boot and what he assumed was a crutch.

When Bucky hobbled in, Steve couldn't hold his smile in. "Hey." He smiled as he spoke. He was just so relieved to see that Bucky was fine...ish.

"Hey." Bucky moved closer, putting the crutch on the other side of Steve when he sat down next to him on the bed.

Steve scratched at a bandage on his face. "I hope I didn't dream up some of what happened out there." He looked at Bucky's lips.

"I'll fill you in later."

Steve liked to think he got the message.

The others walked in, somehow still being slower than the man with a shattered ankle and one crutch.

"Damn," Sam said, drawing the word out in amazement, "I think determination gave him super-speed for a minute there."

"So… What happened after I got knocked out?" Steve slid his hand next to Bucky's leg, out of the view of the others.

"Your sidekick ran mostly on one leg over to you and threw himself on you until we got there," Clint filled in.

"Mostly?" Steve asked.

" _Sidekick_?" Bucky asked, his expression saying it all. "If anyone, Wilson's the sidekick."

"Hey!"

"Metal arm trumps a jet pack." Steve laughed at that. In turn, that made the corner of Bucky's mouth turn up lightly.

It was the closest he had gotten to a smile.

The others could sense that they weren't really in the room with those two after that, Steve and Bucky going to their own little world, leaving the two alone.

"I told you not to go out there."

"I know, but it made more sense to go out there and distract them from you."

Bucky rubbed his forehead, his eyes looking up at Steve. "I don't think you were really using this," Bucky moved his hand from his forehead to point at Steve's head. "Why do you have the helmet if you don't even use your head?"

Steve put his arm out and pulled on Bucky, bringing him into a hug. "I'm glad you're okay, too."

Bucky had his cheek on Steve's collarbone. "Just listen to me next time." He paused, waiting for Steve to say he would.

"Of course." He held his hand out like Bucky had something that he wanted.

Bucky looked down at Steve's hand. "What?" He patted his clothing for something that he might have. Steve shook his head and wiggled his fingers in the air, waiting for something. Bucky looked at his hand, then to his own. He guessed what Steve wanted and put his hand in the waiting one.

"How bad off are you?" Steve wasn't looking at Bucky, but he wasn't looking away because he was embarrassed, either.

"Better than you. At least I can get out of bed."

They shared a look.

"Sort of," Steve said, looking at the crutches.

Bucky smiled and nodded his head. "Sort of."

As a "Get Well" gesture, Nat was going to bring Bucky Bear to Steve. She thought that, even though he had the real thing next to him, the bear would keep him company when Bucky wasn't around (which wasn't often).

Before she went into the room of the medical center that Steve should have rented out for himself, she heard the two talking, their voices bouncing off the walls.

"You do know that you have a concussion, no surprise there. That means no sleeping for Captain America."

"Yeah, well, I know just the person to keep me awake."

Oh man, did she want to see Bucky's reaction to that.

"Hey Steve, I brought you something," Nat announced herself before she entered the room, holding up the bear and shaking it a few times.

Steve coughed and Bucky sat up more, putting his hand on his thigh, the non-metal one that wasn't in a sling.

"Thanks, Nat."

Natasha looked at Bucky's non-functioning arm and thought of a good way of getting it fixed. "Did he tell you that he can't move his arm?"

Steve gave Bucky a look of a parent to a child that was hiding a bruise. "What."

Bucky reacted like the child that was caught. "It's fine. It doesn't  _hurt_  or anything."

"But you can't move it."

"Uh, no."

Steve turned to Nat. "Get Tony."

"No. I can't…" Bucky looked down and Nat stopped walking, "I can't let him do anything to it. There's too much attached, the memories." Steve could see behind Bucky's eyes that he was remembering something unpleasant.

He lowered his head. "Would it help if I was there?"

Bucky was going to cross his arms, but remembered that he needed both of them for that, and let his flesh arm fall back to his thigh. "Probably."

Natasha raised and lowered her eyebrows.

"Well, yeah. Yeah it would."

That's better.

"Okay, as soon as I'm allowed to get out of bed, we're going to Tony to get it fixed. I don't like seeing you…" Bucky looked up at that, wanting to know what he meant. "I know that you hate your arm being useless. You just want it to work, like it use to. I can see that in you." Steve grabbed Bucky Bear and rubbed at the fur with both of his hands, "I hate seeing that."

The first thing that Steve did when he got the clearance to get out of bed was go down to Tony's shop with Bucky. It took a while for him to be cleared. So much so that Bucky's leg was all healed up before he could even get out of bed. Steve didn't plan on going back to the medical center, so he told someone to have his bear sent to his room. When he thought that Bucky couldn't hear him, Steve included that he would be furious if the bear was lost, to be very careful with it.

"Ton? You free for a while?" Steve didn't know where Tony was in his shop, but he called out anyways, "Can you do me a favor?"

From seemingly out of nowhere, Tony popped his face, smeared with oil and grease, up from behind a tool cart.

"Do I get to poke at his arm?"

Steve looked confused. "How did you…?"

"I figured he didn't want to go back to Hydra to get his arm to work again, so I assumed that he would eventually come for my expertise. I could add a few things to it too. I've been looking into making space for a missile launcher and it would work if-"

"Not happening. Just get it working."

Tony raised his lip, doing a little salute. "Yes sir."

They sat Bucky down and Tony went to get his tools, allowing Steve time to find a chair and pull it next to Bucky's.

"How bad do you think it'll be?" Steve asked as he wiggled his chair closer.

"I was just shot in the shoulder. It should only be a broken connection." Tony, with all his genius-ness, would be able to find the problem and fix it pretty quickly. Bucky was shot in the metal, so there wasn't a need for Tony to dig around in the cavity of his shoulder.

"I meant  _you_."

 _"Oh,"_  Bucky thought.

"How're you going to hold up? I can't imagine what those bastards put you through, so I want you to tell me if you ever want Tony to stop."

Bucky was still getting used to the amount of care that Steve had for him. He looked at Steve, an almost pleasant look about him. "I'll just say to stop." He had a feeling he would be fine, considering what Steve was capable of doing to him.

"Okay birdies, I got all my instruments of torture-"

"Tony!"  _Not_  the time to be so insensitive.

Tony looked over, a rag in his mouth. "What?"

Bucky sighed, giving Steve a look that said "Oh, boy."

Tony got the arm off with ease, leaving Steve and Bucky, with one less appendage, to work in better lighting.

"Haven't felt that in a while," Bucky said, rubbing at his shoulder.

"What, your arm getting taken off?"

"No," he responded, looking down at the absence of metal, "Not having something here."

Steve couldn't help but feel bad about it. It was his fault that Bucky didn't have an arm. He knew Bucky lost it when he fell because he said so.

" _It was right before I was found. I don't remember it very well, but I know I woke up that first time with a metal arm."_ He was just answering Pepper's question. He couldn't have possibly know how much guilt Steve felt after learning that. Bucky did know it was just his luck that he would remember something so close to Steve. The way the events played out to him, Steve thought that there was only hours that separated the time when Bucky fell and when Hydra found him and took his mind over. It wasn't fair that he was so close to remembering Steve for all those years, but he couldn't. Hydra made it so he couldn't remember Steve.

"Well  _there's_ your problem," Tony said, holding up a bullet for them to see, "Broke right through this connector." He dropped it in a pile of scrap and looked over at Steve. "Looks like this wasn't an accident either," Tony turned back to the arm, "Whoever did this knew  _exactly_ where to shoot."

"That would make sense, since it was Hydra."

Tony was caught off guard. "W- _What_?"

"You knew that."

"No I didn't!"

Steve rubbed the bridge of his nose. "You were there when we were talking about it." He sounded irritated, which he was.

"I was?"

"He probably drowned you guys out because he wasn't one of the people talking."

Tony pointed a soldering iron at Bucky, waving it a few times at him. "That sounds about right."

"Wow," Steve said, "Your narcissism never ceases to surprise me."

"That's why we're such good friends, Cap Attack. I care about myself and you only care about others. Pretty good teamwork, if I do say so myself."

Bucky put his head back. "This guy."

Given the simplicity of the arm, being that it was the makings of Soviets, it didn't take Tony long to fix the damage to it. The arm was nothing compared to his suits, which was like comparing a straight razor to an electric razor.

"Now the fun part," Tony said, bringing the arm over to Bucky and Steve, "Getting it back on."

Steve put his arm on Bucky's bicep. "How should we go about this?"

Bucky sat himself up. "Steve, you stand on this side of me. It takes a lot of force to get it attached." Steve would hold Bucky up while Tony pushed the arm into place.

Bucky looked pale, like he was going to either throw up or pass out.

Steve rubbed his arm and looked at Tony. "You okay?" He needed that reassurance that Bucky was fine.

"Yeah," his voice was heavy, "Putting it back is always worse than taking it off."

Steve didn't like the sound of that.

"Why?"

"If they don't get it right the first time, they have to do it again." The arm functions by connecting to the nerves in his shoulder. Interfering with those nerves felt like losing or gaining a limb every time it's attached or taken off. Never had it been even close to a good experience.

"That's an insult to my intelligence," Tony said, shoving the arm into place.

Bucky yelled out like, well, his arm was connecting to the nerves in his shoulder. He hunched over, grabbing at the only thing that was available to him: the pant leg over Steve's knee.

"That was  _not_ necessary," Steve barked at Tony, holding onto Bucky and making sure he was fine.

"I ripped off the band-aid. It's better than making him sit in anticipation."

"If you hurt him you're gonna need your best suit to fight me off."

Bucky suddenly threw his arm up at Tony, catching him by the collar of his shirt. The metal twisted and repositioned itself, like it was getting used to moving again.

Tony backed his head away from Bucky's hand, straining his neck. "You're  _welcome_."

"Just making sure it works."

After they left, Tony thought he could get back to a project he was working on. He was fine with working on the arm, getting to scan it and put it in his database, but he still had other things to work on.

"Hey, uh, Tony?"

He looked up, never hearing his name come out of that mouth.

"Can you do something for me?" By the look that Tony gave Bucky, he knew that he would have to try harder. "I know it isn't my place to ask you to do something for me, but I really want to change this."

* * *

"You're kidding."

"I'm not. He seriously just shoved Bucky's arm back in."

Sam, Nat, Clint, and Pepper looked at Tony like he was crazy. It took some level of craziness to do that to a certified man-weapon.

"I got sick of his whining."

It was the day after Tony fixed Bucky's arm. Steve filled them in on how Tony handled the situation in his own special way.

"Whining? You're the most insensitive thing that has walked this-"

Steve stopped when he heard Bucky's bedroom door open. He waited to talk after he saw Bucky walk out. Steve was still in disbelief that his leg was fine. If he saw Bucky limping even slightly he was going to make him go back on the crutches.

Bucky walked into the main area, scratching his bare stomach and yawning. The others knew not to stare at him, in nothing but boxers, because they were already used to seeing him with next to nothing on. When he wasn't wearing clothing that didn't belong to him, Bucky was in just his underwear.

They also knew that Steve was the one to always make up for their lack of staring, and then some.

"Morning, Buck." Steve greeted, watching the soldier for a few more seconds before looking away. He didn't want Bucky catching him staring at him.

Like usual, Bucky groaned in response and headed for the kitchen.

Steve saw something he knew all too well.

Steve saw his shield, his logo, on the blue fabric that was spread across those cheeks, stretched over his skin and jiggling with every step, those cheeks that were swaying their way into the kitchen.

Not that he didn't like what he saw, admittedly he  _really_ did, Steve just didn't expect to see his shield on the ass of Bucky's underwear.

Steve only blushed because the others,  _all of them_ , saw his reaction to the boxers. He tried to hide his face behind one hand, but they just laughed at him.

Clint snorted after Bucky was out of earshot. "And  _that_ , ladies and gentlemen, is how you turn on Captain America first thing in the morning."

Steve's blush burned deeper. He threw a pillow at Clint. "Shut up!"

Bucky appeared from the kitchen. "What's your problem?"

Steve froze and his eyes got comically wide.

Bucky had no idea what they were laughing at and scratched his thigh where lines in his skin were printed from sleeping on a blanket. He felt unfamiliar, kind of silky material, and remembered what underwear he put on after his last shower.

They saw Bucky's reaction and laughed at him as he marched to his room, saying "I forgot to do laundry, shut the hell up!" through the hallway to his room.

When he came back, Bucky had sweatpants on. That was the only addition that he made to his clothing.

The second time around, when he wasn't looking at Bucky's ass and the logo that was there, Steve saw something different about Bucky's arm. He turned to Tony when Bucky went back into the kitchen.

"Did you do something to the star on his arm?"

Tony sort of stopped laughing and looked at Steve, wiping his eye, "Yeah. He asked me if I could change it. Said he was sick of looking like a Soviet."

The star was blue. Steve couldn't help but think about the SHIELD event and how he asked Nat to get them matching suits, with blue ties and pocket squares.

 _"Did he do that_ for _me? Or did he do that_ because _of me?"_

Either way, he was happy that Bucky was making decisions about himself.

* * *

Bucky knew it wasn't good that he defended Steve. By how many times his handler was hitting him, he knew that helping Steve was  _not_  what he should have done.

"Give me one reason why we shouldn't pull you from this and wipe you."

Bucky flinched at his caretaker. He didn't want to forget anything. He couldn't stand forgetting Steve again. He had to come up with something quick.

"They would get suspicious if I didn't help him. I couldn't let them kill him while I sat there and watched when I could have done something. They would have figured that out quickly." Bucky paused, leaning back, "It was part of the act."

It fit the circumstances, but that wasn't why he risked his life and his mission for Steve.

"You couldn't have told us? You know how well we can play along." His caretaker put his hands on the arms of Bucky's chair and leaned in close to his face, looking for any change in emotion. "I really don't want to start over. You're already so far into their system that it would hurt us more to pull you out now."

He was fooling them on both sides. On one side, he was tricking Hydra into thinking that he was staying with the Avengers to get information. On the other side, he was tricking Steve into getting information about them to Hydra.

He knew that, soon, he had to choose.

He could betray Hydra and prove to be loyal to Steve and SHIELD, then deal with the aftermath of Hydra and what they might do to him, or worse, to Steve. That, or he could betray Steve and live with knowing that he hurt the one person he was starting to care about in his miserable life.

Bucky wasn't sure which was worse.


	9. A Choice Made

* * *

Steve or Hydra.

He knew which one he wanted. He knew which one he had to choose.

Bucky sat in his room, wide awake as always, thinking about making someone he was worrying about (not wanting to think that he cared for the man) hate him. How could he possibly pull off lying to Steve, making up some excuse as to why he had to leave the tower? He knew that the more he hurt Steve, the more likely that he would believe the lie. Bucky knew from experience that pain is linked to the truth.

He had to be less attached to Steve, if attached was even the word to describe what was happening between him and the blond man. He knew he had to betray Steve. He wouldn't admit it, but it was to protect him. He could live with Steve hating him for the rest of his life. He couldn't live with Hydra killing Steve because he was the reason why Bucky betrayed them. And he knew that's exactly what they would do.

Steve saw the dark, long hair that he knew well. He recognized the stance of the man in front of him, walking to him. There was nothing else around them. No buildings, no trees, not even grass. Just white nothingness. He didn't feel himself walk over to the man, he only saw himself getting closer, like he was floating. He smiled to the back of the dark hair, resting his hand on one of the man's shoulders.

"Bucky?" Steve asked, pulling on Bucky's shoulder to make him turn around. He reached around to put his hand on Bucky's face, the man finally turning to him.

But the face he expected wasn't the one he saw. It wasn't Bucky. It was an impostor. That wasn't his Bucky.

"Who the hell is-" the impostor tried to say.

Steve heard a gun go off. It was what interrupted the man. Something in his hand shook, immediately smelling like gun smoke.

The impostor in front of him had a red circle on his forehead, a line of red dripping from it. The man went limp, falling to the ground. The impostor's face started to change, from unrecognizable to one Steve knew well.

A face he loved.

He stood there, looking down at Bucky. He was dead.

Something felt heavy in Steve's hand. He picked his hand up, looking down at a gun in his fingers.

"Oh  _God_ , no."

Steve woke with a sharp inhale, tangled in his bedding. He could see Bucky's glassy eyes, that shot in his head that  _Steve-_ every time he blinked. His throat was tight and dry. He felt like he did a long time ago, with his asthma. He couldn't breath.

He wanted to run, to get to Bucky as fast as his legs would let him, but Steve was dizzy and fell when he stood up from his bed. He lunged at the door, throwing it open and stumbling into the wherever that was, it didn't matter. He only cared about getting to Bucky. After knocking over a chair and breaking a lamp, he fell into Bucky's door, struggling to get the door open. He threw his hand at the handle, but it wouldn't grab on and open the door. His hand just flopped against the handle.

On the inside, Bucky heard someone trying to get in. He got out of bed. His sleep hadn't been disturbed because of the decision he had to make. Bucky opened the door to Steve, his shaking hands swinging with the door that provided him with a balance. Steve almost fell into Bucky, and he would have if Bucky hadn't caught him right away.

" _Bucky_?" Steve asked, his voice shattering like glass. He was crying. He asked for Bucky, but it sounded like he was pleading for Bucky to be there. Bucky heard how scared he was, like he just saw something he had feared would happen. He heard that Steve needed Bucky to say that he was there.

"Steve?" It was his way of confirming that he was there with Steve. Bucky didn't remember it, but an exchange of names was all they needed to say for a lot of situations. They knew each other so well that it was all that needed to be said. The rest would be said through their unspoken language.

Steve clung to Bucky's neck, lowering his head into Bucky's bare collarbone. Bucky's arms moved before he thought of doing it, reaching up under Steve's arms to cloak his back in his support. Steve moved his arms, sliding them up and around Bucky's neck, breathing heavily into his chest. It sounded like he had been running for a long time by the way that he was gasping for any available air, though the best place for air probably wasn't right against Bucky's chest.

Bucky didn't say another word. He knew he didn't need to. Bucky did the only thing he was learning that he could do with Steve. He helped him, led Steve to his bed and pulled his bedding up, letting Steve slip under before he flipped the covers over Steve. He tried to go over to the other side of the bed, feeling Steve grab his wrist and stopping to look back at the crying man. Steve needed something, so Bucky knelt next to his bed, nodding to acknowledge that he could do whatever he needed to. It was Steve, after all. He felt like he would do anything then, just so Steve would get back to normal.

Like on the mission, Steve didn't hesitate when he captured Bucky's face in his hands and almost as quickly kissed him. His lips were urgent in a different way than their last kiss. Steve just wanted to know that Bucky was there in front of him, that he hadn't shot him. Bucky's beard scratched at Steve's face but he didn't mind. He welcomed the feeling. It was another thing that his mind couldn't make up if he was in a dream.

Bucky was familiar with the urgency. He felt it whenever he had a breakdown and needed Steve there to bring him back. It was a need so deep that it was almost unthinkable for one to deny whatever the other needed.

Steve pulled his head back, resting it against the one that was still in his hands. Bucky felt Steve's forehead scrunch up against his. He took one of Steve's hands and bent it back, exposing Steve's wrist. Bucky kissed it and rubbed his lips and his cheek against it, breathing into it and breathing in the smell of Steve's skin.

Bucky caught himself thinking about the decision he thought he already made and let Steve's hand go, walking to the other side of the bed and getting in.

Bucky had woken up to hands at his throat before. In the little sleep that he got on his missions, there were times that he woke up with hands trying to stop his shallow breaths. He was familiar with those hands. He wasn't familiar the kind of hand at his throat that was caressing the skin around his vein, over his pulse. Steve couldn't feel where his hand was, as he was still sleeping.

Bucky tried to move his own hand and felt Steve's hair under it. Steve was practically clinging to Bucky, his head on Bucky's unmarred shoulder. Bucky's arm was under his blond head, the rest of it curled up and around Steve's head. Bucky leaned his head over, letting his mouth brush against Steve's forehead and his hairline. He felt... Warm. Warm on the inside. Comfortable? If he could even comprehend the concept of comfort. But it was more than comfort. Like anything outside of his room, anything that required them to get out of bed, didn't matter. Like nothing could hurt them.

_"Is this what "safe" feels like?"_

* * *

"So what was that last night?" Sam asked. He already knew who it was that knocked over the lamp and the chair. They fell like they would if the person who knocked them over came from the direction of Steve's room. "I heard something crash but I thought it was you."

Bucky snorted. "Thanks."

"You know what I mean."

"But really," Tony said, "What was it?"

"I dunno. Probably a nightmare," Bucky shrugged. Whatever it was, it was enough to make Steve cry.

"He didn't tell you?" Unlike Sam, Tony didn't try to hide that he knew who it was that had the nightmare.

Bucky remembered how Steve looked. The first thing he thought when he saw that face was that he didn't want to be the reason behind Steve looking like that, eyes red and wide, mouth turned upside down and gasping for breath. "He didn't have to tell me."

Steve gathered his clothes from the washer and put them in a basket. After he ate breakfast, he was going to fold them. On his way to his room, the others got quiet, more quiet than he thought they could be with Tony and Clint in the same room. He assumed it was about him, but he just acted like it was nothing. When he went back into the room where everyone collected for meals, Steve could feel eyes follow him in.

"Hey guys," he said and picked up Bucky's dishes, about to put them in the kitchen. They were staring at him. "What?" he halfheartedly laughed.

Tony turned in his seat so Steve would look at him. When they made eye contact, Tony flatly stated "Bucky."

Steve saw the bullet he put in Bucky's head. He saw the glazed eyes.

Steve didn't know what was going on when they started clamoring like something was wrong. Bucky was rushing to him, worry on his face. Steve just looked at Bucky, perplexed at seeing real worry on that face. His eyebrows were pulled back, much like the corners of his mouth. Bucky was looking at Steve's hands, twisting them in his own. Steve looked down and saw shards of colored plateware in his palms and fingers.

"Hey jackass, you listening to me?" Steve heard Bucky say.

"Yeah." The way the word carried out made him sound like he wasn't paying attention.

Bucky turned to Tony. "And you think  _I'm_  going to hurt him." Bucky knew as he was speaking that he shouldn't have said that.

"Now we know who the nightmare was about," Tony tried to justify.

Bucky flinched like he was going to beat the hell out of Tony but decided that the idiotic billionaire wasn't worth his time.

Steve was still looking at Bucky, trying to figure out if the light was playing tricks with his eyes. After feeling the pain in his palms, Steve came back to himself. He wasn't sure if Bucky actually looked at him like he was worried or not. If he was worried about Steve over something so small, did that mean he cared? It only takes the smallest of things to worry someone who cares. But he still thought he saw worry under that shaggy hair and in those blue, blue eyes. Was the Soldier starting to care?

It came over Steve like a wave. It felt like a mixture of relieve and closure. He knew then, looking at the worried ex-Winter Soldier, that he didn't want the "old" Bucky back. If the Soldier was part of him, Steve wanted him too. If Steve couldn't cope with and help the difficult parts of Bucky, the Hydra-related parts that required effort on his part to help, then he didn't deserve the good parts that he knew were going to show up under the surface.

* * *

Nat gave Bucky a mirror and let him inspect the back of his head. "I only cut off an inch, so don't worry about the "look" you're trying to go for."

"Trying? I'm just used to it being this way." He noticed that his hair looked a lot less mangy after he let Natasha cut it. He finally gave in to her after she bothered him almost every day about wanting to fix his hair. He had no idea where she learned to cut hair, but she did a good job.

"Can I give you a side-part?" The look he gave her let her know that he had no idea what she meant. "Your- Here," she dragged her nail across his scalp, pulling some of his hair to flip onto the other side of his head. "See? You can't tell me that looks bad."

He shrugged. It was just hair to him. Bucky didn't care either way about it. He was already used to it being long, so he didn't see a point in cutting it short. Whatever else that was done to it was to keep it out of his face.

"So," Nat said, cleaning up the hair on the bathroom tiles, "How're things going with Steve? You seem a lot more like yourself, from what he's told me about you." Steve couldn't have possibly told her every detail about him. It would've taken that much describing for her to know that he was "like himself."

"I don't really know. It's getting more and more complicated every day." And more confusing for him to decide what to do next.

"That'll even out. What's confusing now will seem like the norm later on."

If he stayed that long.

But he wanted to stay.

"Can I ask you something?"

Nat looked up from cleaning. For the first time, Bucky sounded innocent, like he was on the edge of being guilty of something. "Sure," she encouraged.

"Why does he care so much about me? With everything that I'm not..." Bucky went in a different direction, "He knows everything about me, then and now. He knows the people I've killed and how I killed them. But he still cares. Why? Given what he knows, how  _can_ he still care?"

She had her own thoughts about that. She thought about saying something about love, but knew that Steve or Bucky would have to be the ones to mention something like that first.

"Maybe he feels like you deserve to be cared about, after getting mistreated your whole life," she said instead.

"Doubt it. I kill people. I've done nothing to deserve him." He meant to say "it" as in deserving to be cared about, but Nat didn't notice.

"Well... Even when given all the reasons not to...  _care_  for someone, still wanting to care shows how true that feeling is."

She wasn't making it any easier for him.

He needed to think. If it weren't for the situation, Bucky would've asked Steve to take him for a drive. He had to get away from the others so he could think and make faces at his thoughts without them seeing him. Bucky told Nat that he needed to go for a walk, to which she didn't argue.

When he left, Nat felt like she had to get out too. In between the craziness, she slipped out and went for a drink.

The floor was silent, absent of its residents and their chatter. Work was finished and people started going home. For some of them, home was in the tower. Steve was the last of the residents to make their way up to the floor. No one before him noticed the lack of two of the assassins. It was odd for Bucky to not be on the floor, being that he didn't really have anywhere else to go where people weren't totally displeased by his presence.

"Anyone seen Bucky?" Steve asked to the group watching television.

"Isn't he on your bed?" Clint said, a smile twisting into his words.

"What?"

"Oh you mean the  _real_  Bucky. Nope, haven't seen him."

Steve sighed and looked around the floor for him. He started to worry after he checked places twice and thrice.

"Guys I'm serious, I can't find him."

"Well he's always here. Did you check the roof?"

"Yes." Three times.

"Maybe he ran away."

Wrong timing.

"Where's Nat?" Steve called her but there wasn't an answer. His mind wandered to Hydra taking Bucky. "This really isn't funny. If anyone knows where he is-"

"We already told you, like, five times. We have no idea where he is." Tony didn't understand why he was getting so worked up. He'd show up eventually.

On the other side of the city, Bucky kept his hands in the pocket of his sweatshirt, which was actually Steve's, though his metal hand didn't really need to be sheltered from the cold. His hood was up to keep the wind off of his neck and out of the back of his shirt. The muscles in his legs were tight, having not been used to walk a long distances in a while. He didn't know the city, just kept on walking and making turns where he wanted to.

Bucky watched the people he walked by, thinking about the lives that they had beyond the streets of New York. He wondered where they lived, what the insides of their homes looked like. It amazed him, just how many people there were to have homes and insides of homes. He wondered how many people the people he saw knew, and how many people those people knew. " _It's a big world out there_ ," he thought, thinking that his problems couldn't have been the first in the world. Someone had to have gone through making a choice.

 _"No. There's no "making" a choice. I already made it."_  Hydra hates attachment. They want their agents to think solely on the betterment of the organization. "Feelings" didn't matter to them. The only thing they thought about feelings was to not have them.

There was a noise, like something soft getting slammed into something metal, to the right of Bucky that caught the assassin's attention. He looked into an alleyway, seeing an arm poking out from behind a dumpster and two other bodies trying to hide behind it. One of them, he assumed the kid pinned to the dumpster, was trying to catch his breath. Something came over Bucky that made him go to the dumpster and the kids.

"You wanna say that again? I didn't quite hear you over the sound of me kicking your ass," one kid said.

The pinned kid coughed and spat at the ground. "I said, you're one of the kids that needed a hug when you were younger. You turned out like a woman-beater." It was ballsy of the kid to say, given the circumstances.

"Oh, but would you look at who I'm beating now?" The kid lifted his fist for what probably wasn't the first time.

"Hey!" Bucky found himself barking out at them. The kid stopped, his arm falling slightly.

"Piss off, dude."

Bucky was next to them before the kid could punch the one against the dumpster.

"Hey, you little accident, I'm talking to you." Bucky grabbed the arm that was holding onto the front of the other kid's shirt.

"Leggo!" The kid let the other one go and shook Bucky off. The third kid threw the smallest one to the ground, ready to kick him. Bucky got in front of him and caught his foot, twisting it and flipping him on his stomach.

"You wanna take us on, ya bastard?" The accident asked.

Bucky smiled at them, the one still on the ground. He pulled his arm out of his sweatshirt pocket, which had been in there up until then. He raised it, pulling the sleeve down as he did, exposing his metal forearm to the little assholes. "Does it look like I've ever had an easy fight?" Bucky curled his fingers into a fist, his arm still raised. "You brats would be done in three seconds. That's how long it would take me to bash your face in and kick his in," he said, pointing at the standing kid then to the one still on the ground, looking in scared awe of Bucky's arm.

Being smart for what was probably the first time in their lives, the two kids got out of there as soon as they could, making sure to swing around Bucky in what they thought was an area out of his range.

Bucky turned, down to the kid up against the dumpster. "You okay, kid?" Bucky offered him his hand.

The kid looked up at his hand, then to him. He was cautious, but he wasn't judging. "Yeah," he said, taking Bucky's hand, "Thanks."

"Try not to piss of more than one guy at a time. You probably could've taken him, but not both."

The kid wiped the dirt off of his pants. "I could've taken them. I had 'em on the ropes."

Bucky's metal fist clenched, a link to his mind that he noticed had to do with whenever he thought he recognized or remembered something. "Alright then," he relaxed his hand, "Make sure you don't bite off more than you can chew. I guarantee I won't be there next time to save you the pain of getting bitched at by your parents."

The kid laughed. "Ain't that the truth."

* * *

"You're hopeless," Tony said, picking at his nails, "You have this, this fantasy about getting your friend back," Steve shook his head at Tony, "Your friend is gone, Steve. Bucky's gone and the Soldier, he took his place." If only Steve would  _get_  that and stop thinking that everything will fix itself.

Steve shook his head again. "You're wrong."

"I've thought about it a lot and there's no chance of him ever remembering-"

"No, I don't want the old Bucky back. I've already made up my mind about that." They were alone, so Steve thought he would finally explain what he means to Tony, if he could put it all into the right words. "That's not what I meant. He isn't... He's not my  _friend_ , he's..." Steve exhaled, putting his head into his hands. "He isn't going to be the old Bucky, I know that, I've already accepted that. But he's just... He's finally starting to be the person he wants to be, not the one he was forced to be."

Tony thought about it. If Bucky wasn't his friend, then what was he? "We're you two... Did you have something?" He already knew that they did, but he wanted Steve to confirm, to say it so he knew for sure.

Steve picked his head up, sorrow in his smile. "It was a lot different then. Now there's, there's these new laws and people are accepting different kinds of happiness and... We could finally just be..." He drew a shaky breath, clasping his hands behind his head. "God, Tony... Of all the things that I want him to remember, of all the things I  _wish_  he would remember, I just want him to remember  _us_." All the pain he felt from all the time he thought his other half was dead, that it was his fault that his other half was dead, all of his pain spilled out, condensed into a single sob.

It gave Tony chills.

Natasha came through the door, a warm feeling in her throat and stomach after her trip to the bar, where she only had to turn down one guy. She surveyed the area after hearing an almost forced silence, seeing Pepper give her a look. Pepper told her to go to the den, that Steve and Tony were talking there. She was quiet, to not disrupt Steve if he was still saying something. Tony looked up at Nat, something like understanding on his face.

"You wanna take over?" Tony asked, his voice raspy.

"I'm gone for a few hours, and the place falls apart without me," she said, entering and immediately taking a seat next to Steve, "Where would you guys be without us women?"

Tony looked out the window. "Do you know where he is?" He asked.

Steve looked up at her, his eyes puffy.

"He went for a walk. Said he had to think about things."

"So he's fine?" Steve asked, his face lighting up, if only slightly.

"Yes, he's fine. Probably wanted to sport the haircut I gave him. And don't worry, I only cut off an inch."

Tony said something about Pepper needing him, but they knew it was a lie. Still, they didn't stop him to tell him that.

"So how're you doing?"

Steve rubbed his eyes with his hand. "I need to tell you something."

Her eyebrows pinched together at that. "What is it?"

"Nat, I..." Steve coughed and rubbed his mouth, sniffling once.

She kind of assumed what he was trying to say. "You don't have to if you aren't comfortable with it yet, Steve."

"Thing is," Steve looked at her, "I'll never be comfortable about telling someone for the first time." Nat rubbed his back, letting him take his time. After he breathed for a bit, his hands made ready fists. "I- I love him, Nat. I don't even know how long I have. I just looked at him one day and I knew. He gave me his big, goofy grin and I knew, I knew I was in love with that man."

Steve continued on, about Bucky and how they knew they couldn't be together, how he thought he let the man he loved fall to his death, how he didn't want to continue on after that. He talked about how, when he saw Bucky again, he was so shocked that he couldn't believe it. He didn't want to give himself false hope that Bucky was actually alive, didn't want to set his heart up to fail. If it wasn't him and Steve though it was, or if it was him and there was no chance of Bucky remembering Steve, it would have destroyed him.

Bucky stood outside of the tower, looking up at it and knowing who was in there. He knew what he had to do, to save him. Hydra doesn't let anyone get attached. When someone gets attached, they destroy the thing that person is attached to. Bucky knew he could let Hydra kill Steve. Based on that, he knew what had to happen.

Bucky couldn't have what he wanted, as proved to him time and time again.

He went up to the residence floor, to the room that he was told Steve was at. He watched Natasha leave and stood behind the sofa in front of the one Steve was sitting on. Steve just looked up at him, his eyes red.

After he was sure that Natasha was gone, he started what he wished with all his heart that he didn't have to do. "Your fundamental flaw? You can't give up." Like that kid in the alley that, for some reason, Bucky had to help. "No matter how badly the odds are stacked up against you, no matter if you know you have to give up, you don't. Even if the outcome isn't worth it, you can't just give up."

Steve blinked at him, not likening the way he sounded. "Not when it comes to you, I don't."

Bucky groaned and turned around, putting his weight on the back of the sofa.

Steve continued on. "Is there a reason why I should give up?"

Bucky didn't answer him.

"Okay," Steve said, heading for a different direction, "Then just listen. There has to be a reason why we both survived, why were both here today. And don't tell me it's because of the serum because I'm not talking about that."

"What, do you mean fate?" Bucky laughed, bitter. "That's just shit people believe to make themselves feel like there's a reason behind everything." Bucky turned around again, crossing his arms at Steve. "And I wouldn't be here if it wasn't for you. I'm well aware of why Hydra got to me the second time."

"So now you're blaming me?"

"Well, yeah. I could've either died before you found me the first time or died of old age after you were supposed to save me." Steve made a face at that, tears creeping into his eyes again.

"You can blame me all you want. Hell, blame me every second of the time I was in the ice. But you could  _never_  blame me as much as I've already blamed myself." Steve stood, going over to Bucky. "That's only part of the reason why I hurt whenever I look at you."

Not that Bucky wasn't in pain when he saw Steve. He was in pain at that very moment, seeing how much he was hurting Steve. He knew he was hurting him, deliberately putting him through that, which was a lot worse if he had no idea that Steve was in so much pain because of him.

Bucky couldn't think of anything else to say. He knew what he had to say, but he didn't know how to or when. He just let Steve fester for a minute and let him ask the questions.

"Why did you kiss me?" Steve asked suddenly, going in another different direction. He thought that Pandora's box was already opened, so he may as well have some of his questions answered. "You can't possibly tell me that you don't feel anything significant about me." He felt uncertain, like he did when he said something but wasn't absolutely sure that he was right. There was that element of not knowing, that uncertainty that couldn't be dealt with until a question was asked.

Steve was suddenly sick of Bucky not coming to terms with how he felt. He was the one who kissed Steve first, after all. Bucky loved him at one point, so he didn't get why he was denying it. It was just...  _frustrating_. "Stop hiding it, because I know you are."

Bucky looked up at him then, his arms unfolding and falling to his sides. "I'm not hiding anything. There's nothing  _to_  hide." Bucky grabbed onto the front of Steve's shirt. "There's nothing to hide like there's nothing to remember. Stop trying to make me say something that I don't feel. Just give up and quit pursuing me. Unlike  _you_ , I'm not a fucking faggot!" Bucky pushed him back, turning his body to face the back of the sofa again.

Steve stumble back, but not because he was pushed. His face was blank, his mouth parted slightly like he was going to say something. He just stared, feeling his heartbeat in his head.

There were rushed footsteps approaching the den, then Natasha's hand reaching in to hold into the entryway.

"Steve," she said, making him turn around, slowly, to look at her.

She just looked at him, swallowed, and breathed, "It's Peggy."


	10. What to Believe

* * *

They sat in a room, one of them in a different room. None of them wanted to be there, knowing what was happening with the other person in the different room. Nothing could be done about Peggy. It was her time.

Steve was with her, holding the flowers that he always brought. He didn't want to let them go, that being the last time that he  _could_ let them go.

"Don't look like that, Steve."

He wanted to cry. For her, and for another reason.

After Nat came into the den, he knew that something was wrong. " _It's Peggy,"_  she said, real concern on her face.

"What?" Steve asked back. It took him a moment to realize that he only spoke in his mind.

"It doesn't look good, Steve," Nat tried to say. She wanted to explain to him what was wrong instead of making him sit there in suspense, but at the same time she didn't want to have to say it.

Steve just stood there, trying to process just what the hell was going on. Between what Bucky had just said and what Nat was trying to say, he didn't know what to think. He felt as though he was in a nightmare, similar to the one with Bucky where he felt like he was floating.

But he didn't feel like he was floating. He felt like he was sinking, drowning.

Steve didn't want to let go of the flowers.

Bucky could feel his chest ache. Like his chest was warping, bending under the pressure of his actions. It surprised him that he was able to feel anything after what he had done to Steve. He didn't want anyone to look at him, feeling like they could read his mind and knew just what he had done.

Bucky knew what he did. He regretted it the moment it came out of his mouth. Bucky insinuated that Steve was gay, and told him that he himself wasn't. The look on Steve's face… It looked like a boulder was dropped on him, on his heart. Bucky's words crushed his chest, the boulder over his heart, and skewed Steve's face into a mess that he didn't want to see. He was the one that pushed the boulder off the ledge, it tumbling down and crushing Steve. The look on Steve's face... He knew that he had done that.

He knew it had to be done. He already made his decision. Hurting Steve was better than him being dead. But Bucky didn't add Peggy dying into the equation.

The old soldier sat there, hiding his thoughts behind a blank look that was showing itself more that day than it had in a long time, due to Steve on both accounts. At the same time that he hid his thoughts, he wanted someone to notice the pain he was in, so he wouldn't have to be alone. He should have been alone at that moment. His plan after virtually destroying Steve's heart was to leave without another word and never go back. Again, he didn't think that something could come up that would make him stay.

Nat was the one person that he wanted to talk to. He was too afraid to talk to Steve and he never really wanted to talk to the others, sitting around in the same room while Steve was with Peggy. Bucky wanted to talk to Nat to figure out what he should do next, but she couldn't know the whole story. As far as he could remember, he was never the type that was good at making up his own mind. It was so much easier to do what he was told than it was to decide things for himself.

"Come get coffee with me," Nat said, making Bucky look up at her. He didn't argue and followed her out. "What happened back at the tower?" She knew that something wasn't right with Steve when she told him they had to go see Peggy. Nat knew how he was supposed to react and he looked as blank as a sheet of paper. Bucky said something to him before she went to the den. She needed to know what.

"I said something I shouldn't have but needed to say."

Nat looked at him. How could someone need to say something, but shouldn't say it? "You're going to have to clarify for me," she said as they gathered together a tray of cups of coffee.

"I can't."

"Why not?"

Bucky's voice lowered in volume, but raised in pitch, "I didn't even want to say it the first time."

"Then why did you?"

He sniffled. "To protect him," Bucky said, picking up the tray before Nat got the packets of sugar.

"From who?" She asked, grabbing them and walking faster than usual to catch up to him.

"From me." Bucky's chest ached. That deep ache where his heart was straining to pump blood, where it wanted to give up but had to struggle on.

"Hey," Nat said, wanting him to stop, "Don't let him slip away. I know you still want him. The worst thing you can do, is nothing."

He heard her, but couldn't think of anything that could be done.

Steve's body was numb. When the nurses talked to him, or anyone around him talked at all, it reminded him that he wasn't in a nightmare, that his hell was real. It reminded him that everything was falling apart. When someone talked, it was like they were punching his numb body, making him feel the pain that his life seemed to be revolving around.

He had to put the flowers down. After Peg requested that they finally have their dance, he knew, for her, he had to put the flowers down. The nurses should have advised against it, but they helped Peg out of bed and into Steve's arms. He held her up, and they spun in slow, lazy circles to music from their days.

He thought that he was going to hurt her, being the only thing holding her up, but she insisted that she was fine. "I want to have that dance, Steve. Don't worry about hurting me anymore."

Steve knew her well enough to know that she couldn't feel much anymore. She wasn't in pain because she couldn't feel it. It was the best that he could hope for her.

They continued like that, Steve with his arms under Peggy's, Peggy with her arms around Steve's neck but not there for support. They both knew that Steve was the one holding her up, so there was no physical reason for her to have her arms around him.

"Did you tell him?" Peggy asked, her feet light on his.

Steve was the one that had to think about her words for a moment, trying to remember what she meant.

She was talking about Bucky. "No," he said, his throat trying to close itself, "I have a feeling I never will tell him."

Peg looked up at him, her old eyes duller than the last time he saw them. "Why not?"

Steve gave her a smile, "I don't think it'll work out the way it did last time." His smile was fake, of course.

"I have a feeling he doesn't know what he's talking about. Tell him, for me." She had a feeling that Bucky was hiding something, though she never spoke to him. She didn't even know what Bucky said to Steve. She just had a feeling.

They continued to dance in silence, Peggy's family entering the room to watch them. Steve didn't mind, nor did he have the grounds to mind her family wanting to be with her for the remainder of her… Steve didn't want to think about that.

"You know, Steve," Peggy said, her old voice shaky, "We die a little each day," that made Steve loose it. A sob burst from his chest and he held her tighter, putting his eyes on her shoulder.

Peggy felt Steve squeeze her. "We die a little every day. It's called aging," she said over Steve's raked breathing, "Eventually, our bodies can't handle aging anymore, and we pass on. There's things in my life that I regret, but I know one thing that I don't regret." Peggy put her hand on Steve's head, not being able to feel his hair but still wanting her hand there.

They were advised to stop dancing, so Peggy could lay down again before…

Steve looked down at her, seeing her start to fade. "You should be with your family," he said, "But I'll still be here, like how you were for me."

She knew what he meant.

In the end, Peggy was the one to let go of Steve's hand. She knew that was important for him to see, to feel.

* * *

They were emotionally drained. Just knowing what Steve went through with Peggy was enough to exhaust them. Everyone followed Steve into the tower, into the elevator, up the their floor. No one really wanted to be there, but they stayed for Steve. Steve never expressed his desire for them to be there, but everyone knew they had to be there for him, if he decided he wanted to talk.

Peggy died peacefully, surrounded by her remaining family members and Steve, who was considered a family member after how many times he went to visit her.

Steve sat down on a sofa, giving a blank look similar to the ones Bucky had. Expressionless, blank. Without emotion because there was no need for emotion. Surviving took all the energy, the need, out of expressing emotion. The others followed him into the room, but hung back and didn't sit down by him. Bucky thought they were dumb for not going by him and walked behind the sofa and to the front, sitting beside Steve.

"Steve," Bucky said, putting his hand on Steve's forearm.

Steve recoiled, flinging Bucky's arm away. He got up, his back to Bucky. "Don't  _touch_ me."

Bucky let Steve go to his room, closing his eyes and letting his head fall slightly as he went.

Steve didn't come out to eat that night. It worried Bucky and he went to Steve's room, tapping on his door. "Steve?"

"Go away."

Bucky sighed. "Funny. I thought you never wanted me to leave."

Steve opened his door, his eyes red and tried. "If you hated it so much, why didn't you say something?" He said from the darkness of his room. Bucky was thinking about what Steve meant, so he continued on, "If you're so sure about it, I'll stop bothering you." He slammed the door in Bucky's face, locking it behind him. "Now stop bothering  _me_ ," he barked from in his room.

Without another word, Bucky stood there, trying to think of something to say. He didn't want to speak though, given how much his words had hurt Steve. He sat down in front of Steve's room, leaning his back up against the door. He put his head back after a while, thinking about how he could fix what he had broken.

He felt like he was running. Running toward Steve, trying to catch up to him. While he ran, he felt like he was falling, tripping often and scrambling to get back up so he wouldn't lose sight of Steve. He felt like he was tripping over Hydra, like it was the boulders under his feet, the obstacle on his twisting path to Steve. Hydra made him fall, and he had to get back up if he was going to get to Steve.

And he  _had_ to get to Steve.

He stayed at Steve's door, listening to him move around with his enhanced hearing.

But he didn't need super-soldier hearing to hear Steve sobbing all night.

Bucky woke when Steve opened his door that Bucky was sleeping against, making him fall into Steve's room. He blinked and stretched his eyes at the sudden feeling of a floor on his back. Steve stepped over Bucky to get out of his room, without acknowledging Bucky besides having to step over him.

He watched Steve walk away, getting up to follow him to wherever he was going. Steve headed for the kitchen, and Bucky would have too if it wasn't for Natasha stopping him.

"Give him some space. He's trying to act all tough, like nothing happened to hide how much he's hurting."

Bucky wiped his hand on his face. "I know."

"God, this is terrible."

"What should we do?" Pepper asked.

"Nothing," Tony said, "Wait till he does something."

Steve cracked an egg on the side of a pan, it sizzling as it plopped onto the hot metal. He knew it was coming, but that didn't make losing her hurt any less. He wasn't hungry, but he knew he should eat. The others would say something was wrong if he didn't eat. He didn't want them to tell him something was wrong. He just wanted to forget everything that happened the day before. For once, he envied Bucky for not being able to remember things.

Bucky.

Steve was afraid to look at him, to even think about him. The only thing he could think about Bucky was what he said and his mind made up only bad things that would happen from then on. Bucky would leave, he wouldn't stop him from leaving. Bucky would never love him, he was giving up hope on that quickly. The worst one was Bucky feeling indifferent about him. He would rather Bucky hate him than feel nothing toward him, hate nor love. Feeling something was better than  _nothing_.

Steve found himself sick to his stomach, immediately turning off the stove and throwing the pan in the sink. He ran water over the cooking eggs and put soap on top of the mess in the sink, trying to get the smell of nauseating food out of the kitchen and out of his nostrils. He leaned over the counter, his arms holding him up. He felt like throwing up, but there was nothing in his stomach to empty. Steve forced his knee up against the cupboard, trying to stay standing, but sliding down and letting his knee fall to the floor. His other knee followed and he held onto the counter top, hiding his face in his arm. He couldn't hold himself there. Steve let his arms slide down like the rest of him did, defeated, without purpose. He fell against the cupboard, making the door hit against it, and turning his back to it. Steve crouched over himself, his head in his hands.

Bucky tried to explain to them why Steve was acting different from what they expected of him. "I said something to him, alright?" He hated himself for it, for putting Steve through that pain, for not knowing that he was going to add to the damage that Steve was in for. It was twisting him up inside, gnawing at what felt like everything that he needed to survive, chewing it up and disappearing with it without a trace.

He thought he could do it. He thought he could tell Steve that he was never going to have feelings toward him so he could leave and not go back. It wasn't the first time Bucky thought he could do something but couldn't because of Steve.

"I thought you told me you wouldn't hurt him," Tony said, getting up to go check on Steve.

"I know, but I  _swear_ ," Bucky's voice cracked, "This is destroying me." The smell of food coming from the kitchen was making him sick to his stomach.

Tony stopped at the entrance to the kitchen, staring in and watching the man on the floor. Natasha looked up at Tony, trying to figure out why he looked worried. Bucky saw her reaction and looked over at Tony, immediately getting up, his body following his eyes to the kitchen. The others followed right after Bucky, stopping outside of the kitchen while Bucky was the only one who ventured in.

"Hey Steve," he said, kneeling down beside him. He knew why Steve was crying. It only made him hate himself more.

Steve shook his head at Bucky, trying to hide it more under his arms. Bucky reached over to pull his arms away so he could calm Steve down, but he wasn't cooperating.

Then Steve yelled out "Stop!" and flung his arm out, hitting Bucky in the face.

Bucky fell back, looking to the side, not understanding what happened.

He couldn't process the thought of Steve hitting him. It was too foreign for him to think about. It was a problem that he couldn't find the solution to.

Steve looked at Bucky, then looked away as though he deserved it.

Bucky raised himself up, turning his back to Steve. "Is this the end of the line, then?"

Steve didn't respond.

"Fine. If you don't want me here, I don't have a reason for staying."

" _Do something,"_  Steve thought, " _Don't let him walk out."_

When Steve continued to be silent, Bucky left the room, walking past the others that gathered around the entrance to the kitchen.

" _Get up. Do something. Don't just sit here and let him get away. You love him, dammit, do something about it."_  He thought about the path he would take to Bucky, walking past Clint and Sam to get to Bucky. He thought about catching the door handle before Bucky could close it behind him. He thought about grabbing Bucky and not letting him walk away. He wasn't sure he could lose the most important person in his life, the one he made decisions around, the one he loved for God knows how long.

But he did nothing. In his head, he heard what Bucky said the day before, and did nothing.

He felt the thread tying their lives together snap.

Steve hid his head in his arms again, this time clenching his fists. He heard the door to the residence floor open and close. Steve took one of those fists and slammed it into the tile of the kitchen floor, breaking any that were in the way of his hand.

Tony walked into the kitchen then, crossing his arms. "Wow. Way to be a pussy."

Steve looked up at him. "You'd better hope that wasn't directed at me."

Tony smiled at him. "Damn right it was," he nodded.

Steve threw himself at Tony, his hands in the front of Tony's t-shirt. Sam and Clint flinched in their direction, but Pepper and Natasha knew what Tony was doing. "Don't you dare say that to me. You have no idea what the hell is going on between us. What makes you think you can-"

"You  _let_ him walk out," Tony interrupted, slapping Steve's hands away, "Don't you tell me that you're  _brave_  for not going after him. That isn't how the stories go. Brave doesn't mean letting someone you love walk out on you."

Steve looked at him, losing some of the anger that he had at Tony  _because_  of Tony.

Tony shoved his phone at Steve, making him grab onto it before he let go. Unlike when Bucky went on a walk the day before, Steve would have a way of finding the man that time. "You're going after him," he said, his eyebrows raised and his head tilted down slightly, his eyes fixed on Steve, "Because I know you're not a going to let him get away after you just got him back."

Bucky didn't know where he was going to go. He didn't want to go back to Hydra, but he would if it was his last option.

He knew he could find other options besides Hydra.

Anything was better than Hydra.

 _Steve_ was better than-

He couldn't think about Steve. He had to get away from Steve before he hurt him more or got him killed. Bucky knew Steve wouldn't come after him, though he wished he would and wouldn't at the same time. Of course he wanted Steve to go after him, but he knew he had to keep Steve safe and get away from him. Besides, he doubted that he wanted Bucky around after the mess he made of Steve.

He had no idea where he was going. If he knew that damn city once, it was useless to him because he didn't know it then. Not even his walk the day before helped him. Soon, there were less and less people around, and after hours of walking and wandering, the sun was starting to set. Bucky thought about the bed he had back at the tower, but knew he couldn't go back to it. He had to find some other place to sleep. Probably in an abandoned subway. At least, that's what those hobos did in that TV show he watched once.

Bucky wasn't aware that Steve, with Tony's phone housing JARVIS in it, was tracking him down. Tony made Steve angry about what he said, which was just what he needed to stop feeling like shit about letting Bucky leave and getting up and going after him. He was still raw from what Bucky said the day before, but he was going to talk to him about that. Looking back at it, he wondered why Bucky said that but didn't leave right away. If he meant it, he would've left right after he said that. Steve didn't expect to find him falling over in front of his bedroom door.

"Mister Rogers, you were supposed to take a left twenty feet behind you." JARVIS said, sounding loud compared to the silence of the sidewalk around Steve.

"Oh sorry," Steve said, turning around to make his turn. He realized that he apologized to a robot or program or whatever JARVIS was and hoped that no one heard him.

Tony told Steve that JARVIS would do a search of the city and track down Bucky through some means, and to just follow his directions. Pepper asked him if he wanted to take a car or something, but Steve knew that walking in New York was faster than driving through the traffic. Plus, Steve didn't want to drive. He knew the city better by foot.

"A right here," JARVIS told him.

Steve saw a green sweatshirt, with the hood pulled up. He saw his pants on the person and shoved the phone into his pocket, picking up his pace but not running to the man. Bucky kept walking on the sidewalk, past a turn that forked off around a building, Steve taking the turn. He jogged around the building and waited by the end of it, for Bucky to either see him or catch up to him.

Bucky kept his head to the ground, watching only ten feet in front of him so he wouldn't run into anyone or anything. When he saw familiar shoes, he looked up the body for a moment before looking back down, sure that it wasn't Steve.

"You're not even going to apologize?" He thought he heard  _Steve_ say. He thought that it was someone else, given that everyone he passed before that sounded like Steve.

Bucky looked back at the person he passed. He wasn't sure if he should have been relieved or if he should have ran when he saw Steve.

Steve was waiting for an answer. "Well?"

Bucky thought about walking away.

"I suppose it doesn't matter," Steve went on to say, "Because you can say you're sorry all you want to a broken window, but that doesn't make the shards hop back into place and fix themselves."

Bucky turned to Steve, angry because he couldn't understand. "What do you want me to do?" He spoke more intensely than he wanted to.

"If you don't want anything to do with me, leave right now." Steve said suddenly.

Bucky stayed, but realized too late that he should have left. He tried to leave after Steve gave him a look like he was right.

"No. You can't now. I don't know what's going on with you, but I know you don't want to leave."

Bucky didn't deny it.

Bucky felt Steve pull on his arm and he didn't even try to resist being pulled into an alley behind the building he was going to walk right past. Steve hid them behind part of the building that jutted out, sure that no one could see them and interrupt them. "Why did you say it? Did you even mean it?"

Bucky didn't want to look him in the eye. The last time he did, he lied right to his face. "No."

Steve's eyebrows pinched together. "Then why did you say it?"

Why did he call Steve a queer? "Because I thought it would protect you."

"Protect me?" That surprised Steve. "Protect me from what?"

It was like what he told Natasha. "From  _me_. I'm more trouble than I'm worth."

" _Why does he think that he isn't worth anything?"_  Steve had to think, again, that if Bucky meant nothing, then Why was he Steve's whole world? How could he mean nothing to himself if he was all that Steve had ever cared about?

"It was just something to say. You can always say exactly what needs to be said and I try and, and I just hurt you and…" Bucky took Steve's wrist in his hand, clasping his fingers around one side of it. He pushed his thumb up under the sleeve of Steve's jacket so he could feel Steve's skin under his thumb.

It took all of his power to lie to Steve. He had to think long and hard about what he was going to say to Steve when he lied to his face, denying any emotion he had for the man right to his face. It took none of his power to tell Steve the truth. The words that had meaning behind them flowed easily.

"You radiate healing. All you ever do to me is make me better. If I want to get over this Winter Soldier shit, all I have to do is stay by your side." Bucky looked up at Steve, unafraid of lying to him and hurting him because he was only going to tell him the truth. "But that isn't my main concern now. I don't matter here. I'm the one who hurt you and I have to somehow fix that."

Bucky let Steve's wrist go and put his hands on the sides of Steve's face, one of his fingers rubbing under Steve's ear. He knew he was setting himself up, but he didn't think he could live with himself if he lied to Steve. "Right now, I need you to understand how much… Just how much I really do care about you." Steve looked at him like he was preparing for the worst. "Don't… Don't give me that look. Don't look at me like I'm going to let you down. I  _only_ said what I did because I thought it would protect you from the hell that follows me wherever I go. Now I know, I shouldn't have said that to you. There's nothing I want more than for you to understand that. I am sorry, and I shouldn't have said that. I'm sorry that I can't be better for you, that I'm always making mistakes when it comes to you but I'm going to try and prove to you that you don't have to be afraid of me, that your feelings will be matched."

Steve had a hard time believing that. He was already ripped around by what Bucky said before. If words could reach into someone's chest and rip out their heart, that's what Bucky did.

"You don't have to forgive me. That's not what I'm trying to do." Bucky let Steve's face go. "I just want some way to prove to you that I didn't mean what I said." He put his hand on his head. "I don't even need that. I only need you to know that I care too fucking much about you to let myself screw up again." But it was asking too much for Steve to trust him at all after everything he did.

Steve thought about that. He saw how Bucky didn't struggle for his words, didn't have to think before he spoke. "What are you willing to do?" Steve asked, making Bucky light up.

"Anything," he answered immediately after.

Steve still wasn't sure. He knew Bucky was lying when he called him a queer, but he didn't know why he had to lie.

"Kiss me." Bucky said suddenly, almost making Steve backpedal.

"What?"

"You know you heard me."

Steve looked at him, trying to figure him out. He was cautious around Bucky, checking his face before he put his hand on his neck, before he leaned his head down and kissed him, when he turned his head to the side after he pulled it away.

Bucky looked utterly unimpressed. Steve's hand at his neck loosened its grip. "M'kay, nah," Bucky said, raising his eyebrows and flattening his lips at Steve. He looked Steve in the eye, tilting his chin up at him, "Kiss me like you  _mean_ it, dammit," Bucky growled at him through gritted teeth.

Steve saw a scar on Bucky's lip that he hadn't noticed before, even with all the time that he had looked at those lips.

It seemed like all of New York was silent then. Either that, or they were so focused on each other that they didn't pay mind to anything other than themselves.

Steve threw his hands up to Bucky's face, his chest hitting hard against Bucky's. The skin on Bucky's face mashed under Steve's intense hold, cold from the night air under his warm hands. He practically bit at Bucky's lips, pressing his teeth into them and sucking them like he was going to win a fight they weren't having.

Bucky put his hands on Steve's sides, squeezing his jacket and his skin until it was under the same pressure that his lips were. He pulled Steve's stomach closer to his, digging his fingers into Steve's sides. His scent, sweet and almost floral, was profound at their distance to each other.

Steve felt Bucky's hands at his side, pulling him closer. He met the demand by separating their lips for a moment so he could push Bucky to the wall of the building, his own body following oh so close after. At the same moment that he pressed Bucky into the wall, he pressed their lips together again. Steve moved one hand behind Bucky's neck, nudging his knee between Bucky's thigh as he did so.

Bucky moaned into Steve's lips, making them vibrate. Steve breathed out fast onto Bucky's lips and his face, then bit down on those lips. They kissed like they knew what they were doing. They knew how to angle their heads together, how to tilt their chins when one wanted to part for air. They had a much better idea of what to do with each other than their first time kissing.

A car went by, headlights lighting up the alley behind them, the light bending with the corners of the buildings as the car drove by, but not revealing them in their private spot. There was a silent, mutual agreement that they would part, though they kept their lips within reach of each other, pressed up against the corners of the other's mouth.

Steve was about to say something, and Bucky had a pretty good idea what. "Don't," he said into the corner of Steve's mouth, "Let me be the first to say it." He wanted to prove to Steve that he was invested too. Bucky felt like Steve was already so emotionally invested in him that it wasn't fair for him if he was going to say it first. "Put it on me. Don't stress yourself out with what I'll say back and let me be the first to say it." He didn't want Steve to think that he cared more than Bucky did.

Instead of neither two of a couple wanting to say it first, for fear of not being loved back, both of them wanted to say it. Though he didn't have that assured feeling then, Bucky knew that he could come to have it. If there was a feeling between like and love, he was at that spot with Steve.

But he couldn't tell Steve something like that. If Hydra ever learned that their top assassin had any feelings toward someone, whatever those feelings may have been, they-

Actually for all Bucky was concerned, after a kiss like that, Hydra could go fuck itself.


	11. Aftermath of the Storm

* * *

Weeks after what happened with Peggy, the tower flowed back into its natural rhythm. Nat and Clint slipped out during the night, sometimes not returning for days at a time. Pepper made trips to and from Malibu while Tony did his science things. Bucky and Steve fell asleep on the couch often, both trying to catch up on the culture that they missed while otherwise occupied. Sam hung around, poking fun at everyone and going on missions.

It was unannounced and unexpected when JARVIS told the residents that Darcy was at the tower, apparently to "visit," though everyone knew she was there to collect her things from her old room. The room, as of late, hadn't been used much by its new occupant.

Nat showed Darcy in, leading her to the seating in the main living area. The dining table was close to their seats, where the two chatted and watched the men at the table.

"Bucky, sit up and eat your breakfast."

The Soldier's head groaned from its spot on his arm, extended out and flesh against his plate of eggs and toast.

"It's the most important meal of the day."

"No eat. Just sleep."

"You need to sit up," Steve said, leaning his head in closer and using his Captain America voice.

Bucky picked his head off of his arm and sat up, swinging his eyes and head toward Steve. "I will when you stop snoring and I can actually sleep at night."

Steve scoffed, crossing his arms and looking to the end of the table. "I don't snore."

"You may be an icon, but that doesn't save you from being annoying when you're sleeping."

Steve rolled his eyes. "I  _don't_  snore.

Bucky raised his eyebrow at Steve. He grabbed the edge of the table, bracing himself against it while he took in a big, throaty inhale through his nose. "If you don't snore then what was  _that_ noise that I heard for three hours straight last night? Hint: he still thinks "bae" is short for "babe" and likes to eat with a spoon."

"I do  _not_ still think that and that was  _you_ doing an impression of an obnoxious car on its last leg."

Bucky made a buzzer sound and gave Steve a thumbs down. "The correct answer is: Captain Amerifuck."

"So says the Winter Sold-Out-of-Shaving-Cream."

"I  _knew_  you hated my beard!"

"Why would you want to cover up a jaw like that?" Steve said, raising his shoulder and throwing his palm out, "I mean it's an insult to the eyes of everyone, female  _and_  male, to cover something like that up."

"Was that a compliment? I couldn't really tell over the sound of you not having a point."

"Yeah, it was!"

"Well thank you! I like your jaw more!"

"Not possible!"

They stared at each other, blue on blue. Neither of them wanted to be the one that smiled first. They stared at each other, squinting and pursing their lips so their mouths wouldn't turn up.

Bucky was the one who lost, smiling at Steve after he crossed his eyes at Bucky. "Cheater."

Steve smiled back, getting up and putting his plate in the kitchen. When he came back, he walked behind Bucky's chair at the table and hugged him from behind.

"I'll let you win next time."

Bucky put his hand on Steve's arm that was over his collarbone. "Good enough."

Darcy gave Natasha (or whatever her name was after her secrets were leaked by her and she had to come up with another name or something) a look, like "you get to do this every day?" Nat responded with a nod.

Darcy looked back at the two, Steve with his head in the side of Bucky's neck. "I totally ship them."

* * *

Bucky sat down gently on Steve, lowering himself over the man on the bed. He knew that there was dignifying no way to sit on another man, so he did it in the least dignifying way possible: like a whore.

"Goddamn," Steve said, watching Bucky sit on his stomach. His eyes wouldn't stop flicking to every possible place they could. They looked at Bucky's knees, the way his pants tightened over his thighs, his hands just under Steve's arms and almost out of view, his hair in his face and some of it slipping from behind his ear and falling in front of his eyes. And those eyes. That's what did it for him. Those eyes burned into his at almost the same intensity as Steve's chest burned for Bucky.

Bucky kissed the man under him. "I can only hope that you know what the hell you're doing here because, for once, I don't have a clue."

There was hesitation behind Bucky's words. "I don't want to hurt you, Buck."

He laughed. "You're the last person that could hurt me, Rogers." That didn't mean that Bucky wanted to be the one to initiate it. Nor did he want Steve to. Either way, he was going to feel guilty, like he was using Steve.

"What's wrong?" Steve asked, putting his hand against Bucky's cheek.

Bucky sat up straighter, Steve following and propping himself up on his elbows. "I can't. I'd feel like I'd just be using you."

Steve laughed. He gave Bucky a real, shaking-of-his-shoulders laugh. Bucky didn't really- actually he didn't understand that at all.

"We've been thinking the same thing, apparently."

"What? How would  _you_ be using  _me_?" Steve was obviously the one that wanted it longer than Bucky, or at least as far as Bucky could remember.

"I'll feel like you don't want something no matter what. If I'm the one that does something, I feel like it's just me that wants it." That was why Steve didn't hug or kiss Bucky in front of the others. He didn't want Bucky to feel uncomfortable about it. If it was Bucky that initiated something, Steve didn't feel like he was the only one that wanted it, whatever it was.

It was Bucky's turn to laugh. The corners of his mouth turned up like they did a long time ago, like how Steve remembered. It was like that smile was chiseled out of Bucky's face, erased with the memories the two use to share. "We  _are_  both thinking the same thing," he laughed.

"We're old idiots, aren't we?" Steve asked and pulled Bucky down onto him.

"Morons, I guess." Bucky was definitely fine with crouching/laying on Steve's chest. "I just feel like I owe you."

" _Owe me?"_  Bucky was wrong. "You don't owe me anything." It was Steve that owed Bucky everything. He was given a second chance with the man he loved in a time that was more accepting.

"I do. I owe you the happiness that you've given me."

Steve smiled, putting his hand on Bucky's neck. His voice was lower, but only because he knew that Bucky would be able to hear him and he wanted to sound sincere. "Like I said, you don't owe me anything."

Bucky turned his head over, resting his chin on Steve's shoulder. Steve tilted his head to Bucky, pressing his nose against Bucky's cheek. Bucky gently kissed Steve's lips. He not-so-gently grabbed Steve's hands and shoved them above his blond head, pinning them there and pressing the sides of his knees into Steve's hips. Bucky raised his body off of Steve's, moving so their heads were at the same level, his hair hanging in his face and almost onto Steve's.

Tony Stark could usually walk into Steve's room unannounced without a problem. Usually, he could barge in at any time in the day, which was during the night to most people who weren't practically nocturnal. Usually, there wasn't a second super-soldier playing alpha male with Captain America.

Steve and Bucky froze, a concept both of them were personally familiar with, when Steve's (basically their) room illuminated with light. That certainly wasn't expected by either of them.

At the same time, the two turned their heads, slowly, to Tony in their doorway.

He wasn't surprised, it was them after all. Tony just didn't have anything to say to them. He silently turned, taking the door and shutting it behind him.

Steve and Bucky laughed after the door closed, turning to each other like they were two kids that got caught doing something they weren't supposed to do.

That same smile that Bucky use to have was in his mouth again. Bucky noticed where he was looking. "What?" he asked, his laugh still on his breath.

"Nothing," Steve said, his own happiness hooking the corner of his mouth. "You just, you use to smile like that a lot."

"How am I smiling differently?" Bucky wanted to know the exact details. It was a small detail, but it made Steve happy. If it made Steve happy, he would do his utmost to do it again and for the rest of the time that it made Steve happy.

Steve didn't really know how to describe it. It was like his mouth… molded itself to what it used to know. Like some of that fancy metal that Tony showed him. It could be bent in any way but if it was heated it went back to its original shape. "The corners of your mouth turn up more," Steve put his fingers to where he was talking about, "Like there's little hooks there that're pulling on your mouth."

Bucky moved his lips across Steve's fingers, his nails soft and smooth underneath the skin of Bucky's mouth. "I'll be sure to smile that way more, then."

* * *

Steve had his good days, he had his bad days. Some days he would look at Bucky and only be happy, other days he would lay awake at night and think about Peg. Those days, Bucky would be sleeping peacefully next to him, his mouth wide like it always was when he slept, and Steve would be wide awake not able to get her out of his head. There were so many things that he wanted to tell her, that he thought about telling her, after it was too late.

One night, one of his bad nights, Bucky woke from a dream where he was cuddling with Steve. He didn't know that it was just a dream, so it surprised him when he saw a pillow where he thought Steve was supposed to be. Bucky could feel the bed beside him tremor. He turned over, sitting up half way to see what was wrong with Steve.

He remembered, from his past with Steve, laying with a tiny body next to him. Steve wasn't even half the size of the Steve that Bucky knew, his delicate frame struggling to live through the smallest of things. Bucky could remember a little man in his arms, coughing and wheezing, his cold body shaking with all the illnesses that he was burdened with. Breathing was one of the hardest things for that little body. He remembered hugging that body, trying to comfort the shaking out of it.

Steve's body wasn't battling any illnesses, fighting for breath, or shivering from the cold. He didn't have any of his previous illnesses and their bed was warm. He was shaking, his breathing broken into gasps. Steve wasn't trying to hide that he was crying. He was just trying not to wake Bucky up, since he knew he would be fine in the morning. That's how it always went.

"Steve?"

He jumped. For a second, he forgot that Bucky wasn't dead. He spent too long thinking that.

"You fucking jackass," Bucky said, knowing right away why Steve was shaking, "You're not allowed to not tell me when you're crying." Bucky sat up fully, pushing on Steve's shoulder to make him lay on his back. He wanted to see Steve's face.

The moonlight shone on Steve's face, on his nose and on one side where the tears trailed from his eyes when he was laying on his side. He looked away when Bucky rolled him over, too stubborn to admit that something was wrong. "I'm fine," Steve said, his voice brittle, like he was about to crack. He tried turning over, but Bucky held him there.

"Like hell."

Steve still didn't want to acknowledge that he wasn't fine.

Bucky breathed. "Tell me what you need."

"Look Buck, I said I'm-"

"I know for damn sure that you're not fine and I know that she wouldn't want you hold it all in."

Steve actually hadn't cried immediately before Bucky woke up. He was trying to calm himself down and made it so far as stopping his crying. When Bucky mentioned her, Steve's reinforcements gave way. He held his arm over his face, letting the sleeve of his shirt catch the tears.

Bucky eyes downcast after Steve started crying again, frustrated at himself for making that happen.

"No, I'm not alright," Steve said, throwing his arm off of his eyes and scrubbing his hands into them, trying to dry the tears sooner, "But it's a lot easier to admit you're fine when you're not than it is to say something's wrong."

"And you're pretty good at not admitting something's wrong." Bucky had a feeling- No, not even a feeling. He knew that Steve was the type of guy who would rather face something than be chased by it. He raised his eyes to Steve, grabbing his hand and rubbing his thumb over the bone in his wrist. "I can't help you if you won't let me."

"I know," Steve squeezed Bucky's fingers in his palm, "I just… I don't like not being able to do something on my own."

Bucky smiled. That was so like him. "Tough. Get used to it." Steve knew it was false rigidness. "You don't have to do everything alone just because it seems easier that way." Bucky was learning that more and more every day.

Steve smiled at him, one corner of his mouth pulling up, pulling the rest of his mouth with it in a way that let Bucky know that Steve agreed.

"Can I," Steve started, not wanting to ask but knowing he should, "Can I hold you? I know it sounds stupid and cheesy but… I just want to be sure that everything isn't falling apart."

Bucky wanted to think that by saying "everything" and asking to hold him, Steve was saying that Bucky was his everything. "Yeah definitely," he responded, "Whatever you need." Bucky didn't remember everything about Steve that he wanted to, nowhere even close, but he knew how to take care of the dumb punk.

Steve pulled Bucky down to him, letting him readjust his legs in between Steve's and put his metal arm over Steve's chest, knowing Bucky hated laying on it and favored his right side when he slept. Bucky laid on Steve's side, both of his arms around Bucky, holding his world and making damn sure it wouldn't disappear on him again.

* * *

"Okay Pepper, be honest with me here because it's for my own health and well-being," Bucky said to the redhead, walking to her and putting his arm on the back of her chair, the other hand on his hip. She looked up intently at him, almost expecting something witty to come out of Bucky. He breathed in and out through his nose, being melodramatic. "Does Tony have a robot fetish?"

Pepper snorted and covered her mouth with her hand, laughing into it.

Tony raised his hands, his mouth hanging open and he blinked a few times before he gasped like a teenage girl.

Bucky was wondering because Tony asked him if he could polish the arm, so it "could be like a portable mirror." At first, Bucky just stared at him and stated "I think your ego could be seen from space."

"I don't think he does," Pepper said, still laughing.

"I'm safe then?"

"Yeah I think so."

"Good," Bucky said, raising his hands, "Because one Avenger is enough for me."

Sam called from there into the kitchen, "That's you, Steve!"

Steve yelled back, not having a clue what they were talking about, "What?"

"Well," Pepper got to thinking, "Tony  _does_ spend a lot of time in the shop…"

"What?!" Tony watched Bucky laugh at him. "Pepper, don't encourage him!"

"Let's be honest, you spend more time working with metal then you do with me."

"That's because you're always gone, my delicate little flower."

Pepper raised an eyebrow at him. "You go to your shop even when I'm here."

Tony scratched his neck. "Point."

Bucky let them keep discussing Tony's priorities and went to go bug Steve while he cooked for the two of them.

"Hey Bee, can you turn the stove to a lower setting?" Steve asked after he turned to look at who entered the kitchen over his shoulder.

"Sure," Bucky said, trying not to smile at Steve calling him "Bee." It wasn't the first time that he had said it, but Bucky wasn't used to it yet.

Bucky picked a few olives out of the bowl Steve had to the side and sat on the only counter space that wasn't occupied by the food makings. "Can I ask you something?"

"Sure," Steve said, mixing up the eggs for the omelet he was making for them. It was almost seven at night, but they liked to eat breakfast things for supper.

"Tell me about us. What were we like before the war?" It was the only thing about their past that wasn't documented, and if it was it wasn't done very well.

Steve spoke like he explained it a hundred times, letting the milk and the eggs stirred into a lighter yellow mixture. "We knew each other since we were kids, you never let me do anything without your help because you thought I needed it, we grew up, you went to war." Then Steve followed him there.

"No," Bucky said, chewing his olive, "I mean  _us_."

The first thing that Steve thought was " _Shit."_  "We were best friends from the start. We cared a lot about each other. It was pretty hard to make one of us go anywhere without the other."

"You're not answering my question."

Steve stopped mixing the eggs that were already well-mixed, turning to face Bucky. "We agreed that we couldn't be together, okay? I'd die for you, nonetheless."

That caught Bucky's attention. It wasn't what he wanted Steve to tell him, but it picked at his curiosity. "We did?" Bucky would ask what he originally intended to later.

"Yeah." Steve sort of forgot that Bucky didn't know about that. "When I found you that one time after Hydra started their experiments on you, we told each other how we felt. Since we were both in the army and it was a lot different then, we decided not to be together."

How come he didn't know that before? Well, at one point he did, but besides that. "You sacrificed your own happiness for me?" On top of that, if he felt the same way as he did then, Steve would sacrifice his happiness for Bucky at that time too?

Steve smiled, bittersweet. "You say it like I'm the one that suggested it." Bucky's surprised look let Steve know that he had no idea it was Bucky's own suggestion.

" _God, don't hate me Steve,"_  he said, years ago when they were somehow alone amid the hundreds of people at the camp. "This is going to kill me to even say, but… Do you think we shouldn't even try? This just sounds so terrible." Bucky put his hand on Steve's collarbone, rubbing his thumb into the collar of Steve's shirt.

"I love you, alright? Never doubt that. I love you so much that I couldn't live with myself knowing that you had to be put through the pain of people hating us for being happy." Steve held onto Bucky's hand, turning it up and putting his mouth in the heel of his hand. "I would hate myself for putting you through the cruel things that people might do. Believe me, I want you to be happy and  _goddamn_ I want to be the one that makes you happy," Bucky squeezed Steve's hand and his cheek, "But I cannot be the one that gets you in trouble with the army or the one that makes your life hell."

Steve was silent, but he agreed. They knew that they couldn't be together. For each other, they knew that they had to not be together. Steve let Bucky know that he agreed, let him know that he didn't hate him for what they both had to do.

In the kitchen, years later, Steve was looking at the man that he made that cruelly necessary commitment with. "I would let my heart shrivel up and die if it was for your best interest. Of course I would choose to be unhappy if I was doing it for you."

"We agreed to that?" Bucky asked, feeling guilty that he would even ask Steve to do such a thing. "Anyway, that's not even what I was asking."

"I know. I knew you didn't remember that."

Bucky's eyes widened and he pushed the corners of his mouth into his cheeks. "I'm putting this  _gently_ , Steve." He heard what Steve just told him, but he still didn't know what he originally went into the kitchen to find out.

"You'll have to be more blunt because I'm not sure I understand."

Bucky swung his head back, letting Steve finish putting the omelet together in the pan before he spoke. "Did we fuck?"

Steve tripped on his own foot when he attempted to walk to the counter to clean up. He caught himself on said counter, but not before looking like an idiot. "Uhh…"

"What?" Bucky asked, getting off the counter. He went into the kitchen after asking about a possible fetish of Tony's, thinking that he would ask Steve about their relationship before Hydra found Bucky the second time. "Too blunt?" He went over to Steve to make sure the big goof didn't hurt himself.

"Uh, no." Steve answered.

"Was that answering the first or the second question?" There was a red mark on Steve's wrist from it hitting the counter.

Steve swallowed. "Yes?"

"You asshole," Bucky laughed, "That isn't helpful at all."

* * *

It was happening more often. Bucky would get blips, blinks of messages everywhere. They would be there one moment, gone the next. All of them were from Hydra. He knew that he wasn't seeing things. With Hydra, nothing is a coincidence. Even if he  _could_  bring the messages up to anyone, they would be there and gone so fast that he couldn't prove it was happening.

They would appear on any electronic that he was by, at least one time every three days. The messages would say things like "You can't escape" and "There is no hiding." It was a scare tactic that Bucky knew Hydra used. They were using it on him, to get him to go back to them. The messages were happening because he never outright told them to actually go fuck themselves. Even if he did, they were right when they said he couldn't escape Hydra.

The only escape from Hydra was death.

But if someone escaped Hydra through that method, they had better not have anyone they care about still living.

The messages were making Bucky more and more paranoid. Instead of looking for things that he might remember, looking for the smallest details of people, things, or places, he was looking for those messages. At the same time that he didn't want someone to see them, he wanted someone to notice them and help him escape them.

Because of the messages, Bucky got to thinking about the hell that Hydra put him through. He was giving himself more reasons why he had to escape them, his top reason being Steve. He wanted more, though. More reasons to further prove to himself that Hydra was the enemy.

He made them tell him. About all the details of the "accident," even show him pictures of the scene after. He saw the bodies of Howard and Maria Stark, what he had done to Tony and how he ruined the life of a kid who needed his parents in his life.

He killed them. Under Hydra's order, to "shape the century," Bucky killed them.

"Where's Tony?" he asked, looking for the last of the family. "I need to talk to him."

"If it's about your arm, he'll probably need to have some alone time with it."

It wasn't the time for Clint's jokes.

No one could see it, but Bucky was raw with the guilt of what he did. He couldn't remember what he did to them, but after he saw the pictures, he knew that he had to say something to Tony.

"Tony?" Bucky asked into the air of his shop, his voice echoing slightly off of the expanse of metal and concrete.

"Did you break it again? You know, I should start charging you for being your mechanic." Tony's smile disappeared when he saw the pleading, haunted look on Bucky's face.

"I'm sorry. I just… I made them tell me what I did to them. I didn't know, at least I didn't remember exactly what happened." Tony didn't know what he was talking about. He stayed silent because he had a feeling that Bucky would explain. "I don't have the memories of doing it, but I don't need them to know that I didn't want to kill them."

"What are you talking about?" Tony asked immediately after, not liking where it was going.

"Your parents," Bucky said, his eyes red and about to burst with tears.

"You're apologizing about killing them?" It occurred to him that not once did Bucky ever bring up that he was sorry about it. The question, then, was why the sudden change?

"I know that saying Hydra made me do it isn't an excuse. There's no excuse for killing innocent people."

It was his chance to ask it. "Then why did you do it? Why did you take them away from me?"

There were dark dots on the concrete below Bucky. "Hydra has a hold on the lives of the people in it like a finger over a bubble. The slightest movement will pop the bubble, the life of that person." His voice was stable despite the tears coming from his eyes.

"So you did it because they told you to?" He wished there was a bridge under him and Bucky.

"I'm so sorry. I can't know what it was like because I don't remember my parents."

There was pressure under Tony's eyes, clenching his throat and threatening to make his eyes a mess. That's right. Bucky couldn't feel the pain of losing his parents because he couldn't remember ever having them. They were another thing that got erased by Hydra.

He tried to imagine not being able to remember his parents, his father cold and what he thought uncaring, his mother kind and making up for the pseudo-distance of his father. He couldn't even imagine not being able to remember them.

Everyone had some parental figure to mourn, of blood relation or not. Tony thought not remembering them was worse than living through their deaths.

"Look," Tony said, voice wavering. He paused because he didn't want his voice to do something unexpected, like voices do when someone is sick and they never know when they'll sound fine or sound like a frog. "I can't say that it's okay, that it's fine what you did, because it never will be fine with me, but it's almost reassuring to see you like this. Almost."

"You don't have to forgive me." Bucky looked up, cheeks shining. "I don't ask for your forgiveness. I ask for you understanding. I never will forgive myself for it."

"Okay then," Tony said, clearing his throat and the threat of tears from his head, "So we have an understanding? Never forgiving you?"

Bucky nodded and Tony clapped him on the shoulder with his hand. "Good. Now come over here and tell me if you think this is a good idea for your arm."

Tony wanted to show Bucky a lot of things, mostly about Steve. He wanted to see Bucky's reaction to the things that he was shown, just because he's a nosy bastard like that. He brought Bucky back to the residence floors so the other could see his reactions. Why not share the experience? Steve was the only one not there, him being at a meeting.

"Found it," Tony said, handing Bucky his tablet with the picture of pre-serum Steve, "He was such a skinny little brat before the serum."

Bucky smiled at the picture. "You're wrong."

"About what?"

"He's still a brat." Bucky was still smiling.

"Why're you smiling so much, soldier? Are ya smitten?" Clint asked, elbowing Bucky.

"What?" he asked, disconnected from the conversation for a few moments.

"You're smiling a lot. Does a certain someone have a crush on a certain pre-serum someone?"

"Way to drop a hint, Tony." Nat stated, looking at him after she spoke.

"I'm not gonna lie, he was a cute little punkass jerk back then." Bucky said, getting them to laugh. "What?" He held up the tablet for them to see. "Does he  _not_  look like he's thinking "You may be bigger than me but my righteousness is bigger than your mom" right there?!"

"That's it! That's  _exactly_ what he's thinking," Sam laughed, pointing at Bucky and the tablet.

"Who's  _what_ is bigger than  _what_ now?" Bucky had no idea that Steve was standing right behind him. He almost dropped the tablet, which was slightly translucent like a lot of Tony's gadgets. Meaning Steve could see who they were talking about.

Tony put a hand to his chest, where the arc reactor use to be. "Guys run, he's using his Captain America voice."

"I don't even know what that means," Steve said, looking at him like he was an unruly soldier.

"Whoa, calm down there, soldier."

"I bet Steve has an officer kink."

Steve pointed at Clint, "Shut your mouth. I'm not into that kind of stuff," Steve glowered.

Clint raised his lip at Steve, the others sensing that he was getting pretty serious. They chose to let is go and stop with their fun.

With the most calm face, Bucky spoke,"That's not what you said last night," he raised his eyebrows at Steve and drank from his cup of coffee.

Steve's eye's widened at the mischievous man's comment, his face lighting up like a red Christmas light. Steve stood there for a moment, his shoulders raising to an almost unnatural height, his palms raised and his face amazed at Bucky. "Why me?" Steve was finally able to form words.

"What the hell happened last night? Do I have to buy a new bed?" Tony crossed his arms at Steve like he was a kid that got in trouble.

"What?!" Steve was holding his arms out like he was trying to catch something to say. " _Nothing_  happened!"

"So you mean to tell me that you two just  _sleep_?" Even Pepper was skeptical.

Bucky fell over on the sofa, laughing at Steve who was holding his hand out, slack-jawed and not being able to speak.

"Quick, I need your arm. I have to beat myself to death with it," Tony said through his heavy laughter, holding his hand out to Bucky.

"Is it hot in here? I think I'll go for a walk. To Canada." Steve tried to leave but the aftermath of Nat's comment made him stay.

"Says someone who spent almost a whole lifetime in ice."

Bucky sat up at that. "Speaking of which," Bucky used his first finger for emphasis, "Why the hell did you fly the plane into the water? Couldn't you have just  _aimed_ and let momentum carry the bitch down and gotten the fuck out of there?"

Steve knew he was in trouble.

Bucky knew that Steve knew. "We'll discuss that at a later time,  _Steven_."

"Wait, back the hell up," Clint said, getting plenty of time to think, "Who the hell tops in a situation like yours?"

Bucky smiled. "It depends."

"On what?"

"On who's horny where." His last word came out in a snort.

"Whoa whoa  _whoa,_  what are you talking about?" Steve really didn't know?

"Do we really have to use the stupid "pitcher-catcher" analogy?" Tony asked.

"What?" He was so lost.

"Well hit me with a metal arm, Captain America doesn't know sex things." Tony concluded.

"And James Buchanan "I Don't Give A Shit" Barnes hasn't even done anything to him yet." Clint added.

"What's going on?!"

Okay, okay. Come on, Barnes. Leave him alone and come chat with me." Nat was the one to break it up, stealing Bucky away with her.

"Tony, did you start all of this?" Steve asked, the bridge of his nose pinched between his fingers.

"For once, no. He came to me, after apparently seeing pictures of what he did to my parents, and apologized to me. He's the one who started this."

"You didn't forgive him, did you?" Steve asked, matter-of-fact.

"Nope. He said he wouldn't forgive himself either. We at least have that in common."

"You didn't forgive him?"

"No, but have an understanding."

Steve gave Tony a quick slap-hug. "I hate you, man."

"Hate you too."


	12. Attacked

* * *

"Is he better than he was before?"

It wasn't their first talk about Steve after everything that happened between Bucky and him, along with what happened with Peggy.

"I don't have much to work with. Better, as far as I can remember." He meant that he didn't really know what better was with Steve, given that he only knew him for the short time after his memories were erased.

"Well, relative to what you know. I ask you because you spend the most time with him." That, and Steve opened up to Bucky more than anyone else.

Bucky was silent for a while after that. His high from laughing in the other room disappeared. They were talking about Steve's happiness. He didn't want to act like his happiness was something to laugh about. Given the seriousness, Bucky calmed down and had a real conversation with Nat.

"Can I ask you something pretty personal?" Nat leaned her head down, tilting it up to the right to look at Barnes.

When he nodded, Nat dove in. "Do you love him?"

Bucky's chest felt like it expanded to double the previous size. There was a pressure there that came from deep within, his body telling him not to lie. He really only wanted to speak the truth with her, but he knew he couldn't say too much. "I don't know what love is."

She figured he would say something like that. "I can speak from experience. It's like a sickness. You can't just say you're over it and you're magically not sick anymore. You have to learn how to live with it, how to mold yourself around that new, unexpected thing that came into your life." She did love someone once. Never learned to live with it, despite what she told people.

"I don't know," Bucky said.

Nat thought he sounded afraid. "You can probably guess how he feels already." She wanted to reassure him that Steve wouldn't deny the feeling, that he would return it with an amount equal to Bucky's.

The two were having different conversations.

Bucky knew that she thought he had his doubts about Steve. That wasn't it at all. He wasn't afraid that Steve would say he didn't love Bucky back. He pretty much knew the way Steve felt already. Bucky was afraid of the way Hydra would act if they found out he fell in love with his target.

" _For the betterment of Hydra_ ," they would say.

"'I never thought I deserved love."

Nat looked at him like he just broke in front of her. "Why would you think that?"

Bucky looked up at her. He didn't remember what he just said. "What?"

"You. You just said you never thought you deserved love."

The thing is, he believed it. His mouth spoke the truth before his brain could process or filter what he was saying. He never did anything to deserve it. No one at Hydra ever gave him a reason to believe that he deserved anything other than praise for his last kill.

"I think there's a difference between deserving love and earning it." With herself, she thought she needed to earn it. With him, she thought Bucky earned it and deserved it.

* * *

The last time Bruce went to the tower, Tony had him hold the billionaire up while he put on a leg of one of his Iron Man suits. That time, Tony invited him to look over a flaw that Tony was finding in his suits and in JARVIS. He wasn't a tech expert, but Tony asked him to come because he was lost with what to do next.

"Brucy!" Tony greeted from his legs-crossed position on the floor of his shop.

"Hi, Tony." He was, as always, hesitant about everything, making sure the other guy didn't decide to pop out and have a party with Tony's cars. Tony told Bruce that he made a suit for an instance when the Hulk lost control.

"Oh, and just a warning, if you don't make your presence obvious, you may or may not walk in on two senior citizens making out."

Bruce had no clue what to think or say about that. "What?"

Tony turned his head over his shoulder, grease on his forehead. "We call them Captain Amerifuck and Bucky Bottom." Tony turned back to his work on the concrete floor before he could see Bruce's wide eyes and raised brow. "And by "we" I mean me. And I don't call them that all the time."

He had to say it again. " _What_?"

Tony stood, grabbing a rag off the toolbox next to him, "Come on, we'll go introduce you to the love birds."

Bruce could only follow.

They went up to the residence floors, not that many people paying mind to Bruce. He was more accustomed to people in the tower staring at him and making a big fuss about a bomb in a man walking about like he was a normal person. If they didn't think that Bruce was a big deal anymore, and if by "Bucky" Tony meant that guy that almost killed Fury, Bruce assumed that the soldier was at the tower.

"Hey boys, I have the green guy here to visit and help me in the shop," Tony called out. They could hear arguing somewhere on the floor. It wasn't serious arguing, though. More like whoever was talking was joking with each other. They knew each other well enough to know that their argument wasn't serious. Tony and Bruce went to eavesdro- see what was going on.

"How stupid could you be? You seriously could've just jumped out of the plane and walk around until someone found you, like how you apparently jump out of planes these days."

"I wasn't thinking about myself when I was trying to save millions of people, thank you very much for your concern." Bucky crossed his arms and Steve sighed, putting his hands on Bucky's elbows. Tony and Bruce leaned over just enough to see them in the room they were in. "It all worked out fine, though. I woke up rather disoriented, and you tried to kill me but didn't, and you're here with me now. That's the part that matters, right?"

Bucky turned his head to the side. "I guess," he mumbled.

"It's all fine now, since we're back together." Steve's hands slid down to Bucky's hips. "Either way, we can't change the past."

Bucky let his head fall on Steve's shoulder. "You're still fucking stupid."

Steve scoffed, "Gee, love you too."

Tony took that as his cue, apparently, and pushed himself out into the room. "Group hug!" he said, arms open wide to them.

The seniors jumped and Bucky was just about ready to throw a knife at Tony, not because he scared them but because it was  _Tony_. They separated and turned to the two. Bruce followed Tony in the room, not wanting to be caught trying to hide.

"Bruce is here, as you can see." Tony said, smiling like an idiot at them.

Steve looked at the ceiling. "Really."

"Is he the green guy that's a big nerd like you?" Bucky asked.

"We're  _scientists_ , Barnes."

"What scientist isn't a nerd? Or do you prefer geek?"

Bruce and Steve separated from the other two and greeted each other. "Hello again, Captain."

Steve smiled, hopefully not giving away what that he was thinking about the time the night before when Bucky called him "Captain." Notably, in bed. He shook Bruce's hand. "Doctor Banner."

Tony and Bucky had to be broken up in their argument about nerds/geeks and scientists when the latter and Steve had to go on their mission together. It was okayed with Tony and others that the two work on missions with each other. That left Tony and Bruce to look at whatever what was wrong with the suits and JARVIS and to let Bruce do what he intended to go to the tower to get done.

Steve and Bucky were put on a mission at an office building in the city. There were SHIELD agents there that were staging a meeting with Hydra agents. SHIELD was into that recently, using Hydra's influence to fool them into thinking that all of SHIELD was corrupt and willing to betray the rest of the agency.

"So we just wait here?" Bucky asked. He was nervous because of what happened on that one mission. The last mission was supposed to be a breeze, but it ended up crippling his arm and sending the both of them into surgery.

"It won't be like last time. We have a lot more backup this time around, since we know this mission is more serious than a drug bust." Steve knew where everyone on the team was in the building, from the first floor agents to the ones on the roof.

"How long do we wait?"

Steve looked over at him. "You can't be patient?"

"I'm just so bored," Bucky carried out the last word.

"You aren't whining, are you?"

"Yeah, because this is boring."

Steve looked at his phone and checked the comms. "It's better than sitting back at the tower, isn't it?"

Bucky sat back, throwing his leg out on Steve's. "Yeah."

Steve continued looking at his phone, smiling down at it while he put his free hand on Bucky's calf.

" _They're continuing like planned_ ," one of the agents said through the comms.

"Good. Be prepared if anything goes wrong. I'm not having them turn this into a mess," Steve said. Not with Bucky there.

"You should use the Captain America voice later," Bucky said when the guy on the comms was talking, being suggestive toward Steve.

Steve still didn't know what that voice was. "Whatever you want, Buck." That got him to smile.

The comms picked up. " _Dammit, he's on the run_."

Steve piped in. "What? What happened?"

" _He knew about it somehow. Flew the coop before he could even say anything. Headed up on the east stairway_."

" _Do you want us to intercept him, sir?_ "

Steve stood. "No, we're already on the thirty-eighth floor. He can't be up here already. We'll get him."

" _Understood_."

They got up and ran to the stairs. The Hydra agent was somewhere below them, but there wasn't a visual on him. Steve and Bucky searched the stairs and couldn't find him.

"He couldn't have gotten to the roof already, could he?" Bucky asked.

Steve shook his head. "If we can't make it up stairs that fast, I don't see how he could."

"He might've gone out a window and climbed up."

They stopped and Steve looked out a window. "Grappling hook?"

Bucky shrugged. He wasn't about to tell anyone, Steve in particular, that he knew the Hydra agent would run away before they got any info out of him. He was the one who tipped the agent off, after all.

"To the roof, then," Steve said, taking two stairs at a time. Bucky followed silently behind him.

On the roof, there was no doubt that the Hydra agent was there. Right when they opened the door, they were fired at and a magnet was thrown at Steve, powerful enough to take his shield right out of his hands. Steve told Bucky to get the guy and stayed behind to pry his shield from the magnet that attached itself to the wall of the stairway door.

Bucky went after the agent, staying far enough behind so he couldn't tell who it was that was chasing him. If he found out it was Bucky and went back to Hydra with that information, it wouldn't end well. If he saw Bucky, the soldier knew he had to dispose of him. The agent fired at Bucky as they jumped from roof to roof, grazing him once in the leg only because he was avoiding the light that would give him away.

"Heads up!" Steve yelled, making Bucky turn around and see the shield that was coming for him. Bucky caught it and repositioned to throw it at the Hydra agent. When he was turning to run, Bucky flung the shield into the agent's back, knocking him down and out right by the edge of the building.

Once Steve caught up with Bucky, they went over to the agent and Steve picked his shield up. He was wondering why Bucky was staying further back than he needed to. He was also wondering why he caught up to Bucky. He was stalled back at the other building but he knew that Bucky was more than capable of catching the agent. It didn't make sense why Bucky didn't catch him and why Steve was able to catch up to them easily.

"Didn't even break a sweat," Steve said, motioning to the collapsed agent.

"That was easier than expected," Bucky responded, looking around. "Makes me feel like something's wrong."

Some of the SHIELD agents were meeting up with the super-soldiers, making what they easily did look ten times harder. "Is he down?"

"Yeah. We need to secure him and take him in for questioning," Steve instructed, walking closer to the Hydra agent to get restraints that one of the SHIELD guys brought.

Bucky stayed back, making well sure that if the Hydra agent woke up, he wouldn't see that one of their own was betraying them. He watched Steve try to figure out how to open up the restraints, standing over the Hydra agent as he fumbled with it. Bucky looked down at the agent, making sure he didn't move in the slightest, otherwise Steve might be in-

The agent, with his hands close together after he fell, moved one of his fingers to his wrist and reached for something on his watch.

"Steve!" Bucky yelled, making him look up from the restraints, "Get away from-"

Steve jumped out of the way of the Hydra agent's body exploding just as Bucky was jumping to get to Steve. They flew past each other, one into the safety of the roof and the other into the blast of concrete and blood. Bucky turned around mid-air, looking back at Steve as he fell over into the open air next to the seventy-story building.

They shared a moment of eye contact before Bucky fell, grabbing onto a piece of debris that protruded from the building. His metal arm was strained to hold all of his weight, the connection at his bone under more tension than it should have been in. He was hanging on by a scrap of metal that was going to break at any moment. He knew he couldn't move, could hardly breathe let alone move to reach with his other hand, otherwise the metal would snap. At the worst possible time, he felt like he was in a situation like that before, meaning his arm twitched. He slipped to the end of the metal, making his hand strain even more to tighten its grip on the scrap.

Steve was familiar with the scenario. He looked down at Bucky, seeing the snow below him and the rocks that he fell into. He couldn't save him last time. He watched him fall last time. Steve was frozen, unmoving like he was for seventy-something years. He couldn't hear the men behind him wondering what was going on or Bucky below him calling his name. There was no moving, no thinking involved. Steve was reliving what happened to him last time Bucky was hanging onto a thread below him.

"This is what happened last time, isn't it?"

Bucky wasn't afraid. He sounded like he was finally understanding something.

Steve snapped out of it.

He got on his knees, down in the blood of the ruined body of the Hydra agent, and reached out for Bucky, for his world.

"Yeah. You don't have to put your trust in me to save you, since I couldn't last time," Steve dug his hand into the jagged edges of the building, "Just know that if you fall, I'm following you."

That wasn't what Bucky wanted at all.

Just hearing that from him was enough to get Bucky to move his arm, swinging it up to catch Steve's. They locked their hands around each other's wrists, Bucky's hand grabbing around the red hair tie that was on Steve. The moment that Bucky grabbed onto Steve, the metal gave out. It fell to the ground, stories below. Steve swung Bucky over the safe edge of the building, him falling hard onto the roof. It hurt, but neither of them cared about that.

Hurting was better than feeling nothing at all.

* * *

Steve and Bucky, understandably, got the next day off. They stayed away from the others and kept to themselves in their room. Everyone knew not to bother them after they were given the details of their mission. It wasn't a complete bust, but the Hydra agent that they were going to question was splattered on the roof and side of a building.

The day after, Bucky was told to give his report to the SHIELD officials. There were agents that were on the mission there, all to give their side of the story after Bucky. They made him tell them what went right and what went wrong, him leaving out the details that only he could know.

The agents were giving their sides of the mission when one of them said that it was Steve's fault for how it all ended.

"How was it his fault?" Bucky had to ask. He knew the kid was new (SHIELD was desperate and brought youngsters in) and wasn't right to question the guy in charge.

"He told us not to go after the Hydra guy," the newbie answered.

"If it was you next to him when he blew up, you'd be dead."

"We never took him blowing himself up into consideration."

Bucky stood, done with the idiocy of the room. "Take my foot up your ass into consideration." With all the theatrics, he left the room. He didn't have any more to say anyways.

Bucky went back up to the residence floors to complain to Steve. He found Tony and Bruce fiddling about with robotics in the main living area, Nat in the kitchen making food for Clint, and Sam reading, but no Steve.

He went to go check their room, guessing that he might be in there to get some alone time. Bucky knocked on their door, asking if Steve was in there by calling his name. When he didn't get a response, he poked his head in to see if Steve was sleeping. He thought about joining him if he was in there.

The door was yanked open and Bucky fell in, then was yanked in like the door. Momentum was against him and he was thrown to the floor. He knew they were from Hydra, given they knew how to handle him to make sure they didn't die. They put devices on his wrists and ankles, latching him to the floor.

"If you scream or even make the slightest of sounds that give us away, we'll do the same thing to him, and you know who we mean." If they could do that to him, Bucky knew they could do that to Steve. He remained silent. "Good. Now, listen to us. We want you to come back to us, sooner rather than later. If you don't, it won't end up well with the captain."

Out of their belts they pulled knives and mini torches. As a test, one of them made a fast cut along the side of Bucky's arm. He didn't make a sound.

"You're going to complete your mission. Either by your own hands or by ours. Steve Rogers will die, and we will guarantee that."

Hydra uses pain to get their people to do what they want. They used pain to get Bucky to do things that he didn't remember rebelling against. Pain was the tool of choice to manipulate Hydra's agents into doing their bidding.

They were using pain then to get him to understand that you just can't walk away from Hydra.

With the knives, they made deep cuts into his arms, his stomach, his chest. His skin was splitting under the knife, opening up and gushing blood onto the carpet of their room. With the mini torch, they burned around the fresh cuts, the heat so intense that it burned the smell of his scorched flesh and blood away. It didn't matter if anyone outside the room could smell the burning flesh. The Hydra men wouldn't be there long. Just enough to keep their failed weapon from moving for a while.

Through it all, the searing and the cutting, Bucky didn't so much as breath louder than normal. His fear of Hydra getting to Steve and doing what they did to him was greater than the pain he was in.

The men spoke to him the whole eternity that they scarred him, speaking of the details of how they would do that to Steve if Bucky didn't do as he was told. He started to think that it was better to kill Steve and know that he would die painlessly than let Hydra get to him.

Then he thought about himself. He couldn't live without Steve. There was no him, literally, without Steve. He was sure that he as Bucky couldn't exist without Steve. Without Steve, he was just the Winter Soldier as much as Steve was Captain America without Bucky. They shared a past that no one could replicate. Their lives revolved so much around each other that they weren't themselves without the other man. It was like separating a set of two antique cups that are worth nothing without its other half, without its pair. The two needed to be together, their pasts and futures always together, for the cups to be of any value.

They cut and seared his chest, burning into what he was sure was his heart. It was okay, though, if they burned his heart and killed Steve. He wouldn't need a heart if he couldn't have Steve.

He couldn't move his arms or legs, but he wouldn't need to if they couldn't move in the direction of Steve.

Even his breath wouldn't be needed if he couldn't breathe with Steve.

He knew he couldn't kill Steve. He would die without his other half.

Not knowing anything, Natasha wondered if Bucky was hungry. Clint told her not to worry about him and was being selfish about their food, to which she told him to stuff some in his stupid mouth while she went to ask Bucky. Natasha knocked on the door that Steve and Bucky shared, not waiting for him to answer before she opened it. She was comfortable with walking in whatever the hell that the two might have been up to. Nat knew that Steve was in the main area with Bruce and Tony, walking in a few minutes after Bucky stormed in, so Bucky alone in there couldn't be that bad.

How wrong had she been.

The first thing that Nat saw was the metal devices that were holding hands down. Just as soon as she saw the men torturing Bucky, she acted. Nat thrust forward and knocked out two of the men before the third could get up. Mercilessly, she took a knife that they were using to cut Bucky and shoved it into his eye, deep enough to go back into his brain.

The second thing that she did was scream, a reaction to the wreckage of a man below her. She screamed for Steve, raw like the wounds that were all over Bucky.

Steve was the first to get to their room. The door was wide open from Nat rushing into the room. There were three men on the bloodied carpet beside Bucky, but Steve didn't care about them or their wellbeing. All he really saw was Bucky. Nat was trying and failing to get the devices holding Bucky down off. Tony pushed past Steve to help Nat get them off. Bruce guided Steve to the side so he could get into the room, to Bucky. Tony threw the dead and unconscious men to the side, not in the slightest caring about them. Sam and Clint came last to the room, expressing how surprised and worried they actually were before they could catch themselves.

There was something reflecting that caught Steve's eye. It was Bucky's metal hand, twitching as he moved in pain. Everyone wanted to know why Bucky wasn't screaming, or at least moaning. His breathing was the only thing that changed between the time that he was being tortured and Nat taking the men down.

Steve's feet carried themselves to Bucky, always walking in his direction somehow, and his knees gave out beside the ruined man.

"Say something." Steve was speaking to himself and to Bucky.

Bucky didn't respond with words. He whimpered.

Steve put Bucky's head on his lap, almost getting a complaint from Bruce. Steve rubbed the hair and tears from his face. "What can I do? You must need something. What do you need?"

Bucky nudged his head into Steve's hand. "You," he responded, turning his head to rest against Steve's leg.

Bruce tried to turn Bucky's head back so he could breathe better. Bucky whimpered again and turned his head back to Steve. Breathing wasn't what Bucky needed. Steve put his hand on Bucky's neck, on his pulse. Bucky put his hand, the metal, undamaged one, on Steve's. Steve opened up his thumb to let Bucky's fingers in.

"My arm doesn't hurt anymore," Bucky said, sounding dazed. Steve doubled over to rest his head against Bucky's.

As best as he could, Bruce tended to the wounds that needed immediate attention. There were several deep, burned gashes that were bleeding despite being burned. He had a few cuts that hit veins and Bruce had Tony put pressure on them.

The artery under Steve's fingers faded. Bucky's hand slipped from Steve's.

"Hey," Steve said, not understanding why he couldn't feel Bucky breathing. "Hey!"

Bruce turned Bucky's head back over, of which Steve didn't need to see. It flopped to the side, his pupils still and his face expressionless.

Clint and Sam tore Steve away from Bucky, his head falling to the floor and Steve's body following suit. Bruce immediately started CPR, pressing on Bucky's chest like his heart stopped. He yelled to Tony to get him something, but Steve couldn't hear what. Tony went to Bruce's bag and pulled out those things that Steve saw people use on TV to revive people. They charged up and pressed the pads to Bucky's chest, making him look like he was in pain as his body jerked around.

"Why're they doing that?" Steve asked. "He's not dead, so why're they…" Steve flinched every time Bucky's body jerked.

"Steve, it doesn't look good," Bruce said, putting the pads to Bucky's chest again.

"What?" Steve noticed that Bucky wasn't blinking.

"No." He tried to stand to get to Bucky, but he fell, with Sam and Clint catching him. His legs couldn't do what they did before without him trying.

Bucky wasn't doing the things that Steve saw him do all the time, all throughout their lives. He wasn't rolling his eyes at Steve, he wasn't complaining about the weather or trying to spit at Steve. Bucky wasn't breathing and that was making it impossible for Steve to breathe.

"Bucky, I just got you back," Steve said, pleading with the unmoving body. Bruce waited longer between his tries to revive Bucky. Steve went to his knees, leaning on his hands. "I just got you back."

Steve started screaming. "Goddamn it, Bucky! It isn't the end of the line yet!" Something tickled Steve's nose. He realized that it was tears. " _You fucking can't_ , Bucky!" He wasn't listening to Steve.

It wasn't promising. Bruce knew he was only going to give it a few more tries, just to satisfy the others. He knew it was already too late. As he put the pads to Bucky's chest another time, Steve screamed out, pleading with everything that he had, everything that was him and them, " _James!_ "

Bucky suddenly caught his breath, his chest heaving and working its hardest to catch up to all the oxygen that it lost.

The next moments were a blur to everyone. Steve scrambled to Bucky, who was reaching out for Steve, not next to him like he thought. Steve reached out for Bucky before the rest of his body was even there, reaching out to make sure that he wouldn't lose him again. Steve pulled Bucky up halfway, into his arms, and kissed him. Both of them needed that reassurance of their lips, something that could never be duplicated with another person, something that they would only share, to be sure that the other man was there next to him.


	13. Compliance

* * *

Steve was the one who carried Bucky to the dining table. He needed to be moved to a place with better lighting so Bruce could work on him there. Not that anyone else wasn't able to carry him, which they probably should have because of the emotional stress that Steve just went through, he just wanted to be the one that made sure he was safe, that he wouldn't slip away. Again.

The others helped Bruce get his instruments ready and helped him prep, pulling all the chairs away from the table and getting anything that Bruce requested. Steve laid Bucky down, putting his feet and legs on the table first and slowly lowering his torso down after. Steve apologized more times than necessary when Bucky winced at being laid down on a glass table. Tony, of all people, took a pillow from their bed and put it under Bucky's head. He looked down at Bucky, who didn't understand the gesture, and went to turn up the setting of the light fixture over the dining table.

All but one of the chairs were away from the table, the others knowing that Steve would want to sit by Bucky. Bucky didn't know what had happened to him after he passed out. Everyone was looking at him like he shouldn't be there on that table. Steve, in particular, was looking at him, eyes red and cheeks not yet dry, like he just saw him d-

"I'm sorry," Bucky said suddenly before he could finish his thought.

Steve's eyes widened and went back to their normal size. "For what?"

"You look worried, smartass." Bucky thought that Steve would at least laugh.

"I am." He was only serious. Steve caught Bucky's name calling and flashed a smile at him. He didn't want the guy on the table worrying. Steve wasn't the one who needed to be worried about. "Why wouldn't I be, princess?"

Bucky smiled. "Fuck you, I'm not a princess."

"You're too injured to be a jackass right now."

"Yes,  _Mom_."

"Didn't I just tell you not to be an ass?"

"You're too "Captain America" to swear. Or should I say Captain Skinny-Dick?"

"I'm Captain Worrying-About-Your-Ass right now."

"I think your little "A" on your helmet should get changed to an "O". You know, for Obvious." Bucky winced again when Bruce started closing up one of his seemingly never-ending cuts.

Bruce immediately stopped moving, afraid of the assassin that he read about. "Sorry."

Bucky blinked longer than normal. "No, it's okay." Bruce paused before he began with the stitches again. "This is a lot more pleasant than anything I remember at Hydra."

"Is that because of the guy on your left?" Sam piped up.

Bucky looked over at Steve, at his eyes still red. "Eh, he helps, I guess," Bucky shrugged with a smile.

Steve gave him an eyebrows-raised smirk. "You're not going to freak out on me are ya?" He looked at Bucky's torso and his smile disappeared. "You know, like you always do when you get put in any situation where it reminds you of Hydra."

"No, I won't  _freak out_  on you," Bucky readjusted his arm so it was out of Bruce's way, "I trust him because you do."

Steve and Bruce shared a look while Bucky's eyes were closed.

Bucky didn't need to see them to know that they were sharing a look about him. "You're still a dick, by the way."

Steve coughed. "You're still an asshole."

Bucky laughed, it coming from deep in his throat, making his lungs jerk with it. He started coughing, making Steve put his hand on Bucky's chest to calm him down. There was only one spot on his chest, just to the right of his heart, that didn't have some sort of injury to it.

"Sorry, Buck."

"Don't be." One of his eyes closed when Bruce was tying the end of the stitch he was working on. "Laughing isn't a bad thing. It hurts, but it isn't a bad hurt."

"Are you sure you're fine? You don't look fine."

Bucky swung his head to the side at Steve. He turned it back up and away from Steve with a flick. "You always think I look terrible." He sounded like a pissy teenage girl.

Steve rolled his eyes, intensely. "Your beard looks fine! How many time do I have to tell you that?"

"Okay old farts, you have time to do couple-y things later, preferably when one of you isn't bleeding out on my table," Tony interrupted.

Steve was happy that Tony ended it. He propped his head up on his arm that was on the table and reached for Bucky's hand.

Bucky felt Steve grab his hand. He tried to pull away, but Steve wouldn't let him. "You're on the wrong side of me for that." He meant that the metal arm wasn't very favorable for hand-holding.

Steve spoke around his restricted jaw movement from his hand under it. "There is no wrong side of you." It wasn't the first time that Bucky tried to shy away from Steve because of his metal arm. Steve wanted Bucky to know that the arm was a part of him, that he wouldn't go out of his way to hold the other hand. He wouldn't disregard Bucky's arm because Bucky hated it, hated that he had to depend on it.

"I'm shaving the beard as soon as I can pick up a razor."

Steve thought they had dropped that. "I don't hate your beard!"

When Bruce was done, Steve picked up Bucky bridal-style like he did before. Steve carried the patched man to what should be his room, if not for them sharing a bed as of late. Until his room was cleaned, Steve knew that they would be in Bucky's room, it obvious to everyone that they weren't about to sleep in different rooms just because their usual one was in need of a cleaning.

"I'll be back, princess. I need to talk to Nat." Steve scuttled out as Bucky threw random objects at him.

"I hate him so much," Bucky scoffed.

"Do you?" Sam asked, giving Bucky long blinks like he knew he was lying.

"Absolutely not." Bucky started out sounding intense, like he was saying he did hate Steve, then his voice trailed.

Steve got Nat alone, after they restrained the Hydra men and gave them to SHIELD agents to out into holding.

"Can you promise me something, Nat?"

She was caught off guard. The last favor Steve asked was for his and Bucky's matching suits. "Yeah, what is it?"

"If I die before he-" Steve stopped to tell her to listen, not to deny that he would never die anytime soon. "No, listen to me. This is important. If I die before Bucky does, promise me you'll take care of him."

Of course she would. She does what Steve asks her. That's what their friendship was like. "Steve, I-"

"I know you can handle him. That's not what you're concerned about, I know. Don't deny that I couldn't possibly die before he does. It's very possible." Steve grabbed her arm, not harshly like he had done in the past. "Please, Natasha."

She didn't want to look at him. Nat didn't like thinking of a world without Captain America. Not even that. She didn't like thinking of a world where Bucky would be without Steve, or Steve without Bucky. "Okay, I will. You know I will."

"It's nice to hear you promise, rather than me assume."

Bucky didn't like being without Steve. In all honesty, he was terrified after what Hydra did to him. He was sweating and his chest was hurting, and not because of the stab wounds there. It wasn't even his physical pain that was making him hurt. It was a psychological, emotional pain from the thought of Steve watching him die, which he assumed is what happened to him to have everyone give off such a presence of despair in the other room. Emotional pain differs from physical pain in that emotional pain can affect you physically, but not vice versa.

He wanted to see Steve. It was like pinching skin on some place other than an injury or squeezing something harder, to try and redirect the pain, to make it feel like the stronger of the two pains wasn't as bad as. That's what Steve did to Bucky's pain. Except, instead of redirecting the pain, Steve upright eliminated it completely. That's what effect he had on Bucky.

Steve relieved Sam of Bucky Watching duty and snuck in bed behind him, sitting him up and absorbing Bucky's torn torso into his arms. No one wanted to leave Bucky alone after the last time proved to be disastrous. Steve was the one most suitable for the job, as "there ain't no security system like a super-soldier," in Clint's words.

"Sorry, can… Can you rub my shoulder?" Bucky asked like he was being a burden.

"Yeah, definitely." Steve didn't need to be told which one.

Bucky trusted him to know what shoulder was bothering him. It fucking sucked. He could trust Steve, completely, having no reason not to trust him, but Steve couldn't trust Bucky. It hurt him knowing that Steve couldn't trust him, knowing that  _he_ was the reason why Steve couldn't trust him.

Steve looked at the arm, at the curves and the movements that it made without Bucky even realizing it. It was sexy, in the way that cars are sexy. The curves of it and the way it moved, most of the time in the way that made Steve have to put a filter on his mind to not blush after realizing his thoughts. He wondered about the star, why Bucky wanted to change it to blue. He had a feeling that Tony knew the reason, but he wasn't about to ask if it was going to upset Bucky for him asking Tony.

"Hey Buck?"

Bucky was pulled from his thoughts. "Yeah?"

"Why'd you make the star blue?"

Bucky was grateful that Steve couldn't see his face or the shade darker that it was getting. "Blue reminds me of you," which wasn't a lie. "I don't want to look at it and be reminded of the blood that I've spilled. I don't want more reason to hate it."

In truth, he did it because the color reminded him of Steve's eyes. But he couldn't tell Steve that because that was way too sappy for him to know. When Bucky asked Tony to paint it blue, he was, unknown to him, being very difficult with the color,

"Why don't you just pick any color? It's just blue, it's not like it's a life-or-death decision," Tony complained.

"Shut up. I want it to be the right color." He was trying to match the dark rim around the edge of Steve's irises, that part that took a lot of looking to see if someone didn't look at very often. He didn't have that problem.

"I'll tell you when I need to. It's ridiculously sappy," Bucky said, shimmying down so he was low enough to rest his head back on Steve's shoulder.

Steve smiled at Bucky's weak blush.

"You know what I was thinking the whole time they were attacking me?" Bucky asked. He wanted Steve to know. Maybe it would make up for his constant lying.

"That you definitely don't want to try anything with restraints?"

Bucky laughed once. "Calm your hormones, there, Cap. I was thinking "I don't want Steve to ever feel this." So I'm determined to make sure you never will."

Steve put his forehead against Bucky's neck. "That doesn't mean you had to go through it, though."

"I'm just saying." It was at least one thing that Bucky could be truthful about. He felt like there were more lies than truths when it came to what he told Steve about himself.

Bucky fell asleep like that, sitting with Steve's arms around him, mumbling things in his sleep. Some things were in Russian, other things in English. Just his voice was enough for Steve, it didn't matter what dialect he used.

When Steve slipped out of Bucky's room to get the sleeping man a glass of water, he saw someone sitting in one of the chairs by the kitchen.

"You know, Rogers," the man turned around in the chair, waving Steve over, "You aren't supposed to get emotionally involved."

Steve smiled at the back of the man's head, disguised in a hood. "You know, Nick, some people call before they show up."

"I can't afford to announce where I'm going." Fury stood up and met Steve halfway.

"It's a nice gesture. Keeps people from having heart attacks."

"Well," Fury shrugged, "You've gotta go with the times."

"I know some about that."

Fury looked down at the glass in Steve's hand. "I came here to know, if the price of freedom were Barnes, would you be willing to pay it?" he said, imitating the way Steve said that line like the way Steve did at the Triskelion. Nick moved his eyes from the glass to Steve.

All but his mouth was still, his lungs and, he was sure, his heart. "Don't make me answer that."

"I  _think_ ," Nick turned to leave, "I already know the answer."

* * *

Because he was a bastard, Bucky healed in what seemed like no time at all. It genuinely surprised everyone at just how fast he recovered, even amazing Steve, who was familiar with the effects of the name brand super-soldier serum.

Tony was the one who realized first hand just how fast Bucky could heal. He, mistakenly, thought that the two collectables wouldn't try any hanky panky while Bucky was still recovering.

But before that, Steve and Bucky were in their room, what seemed to be finally deciding to go further with their relationship. That's what Steve said, anyway.

"Wait," he held Bucky there, over him.

"What? You aren't chickening out on me, are you Rogers? You're the one that suggested  _going further_ ," Bucky mocked.

"Not that."

"Then what? You don't want to?" Bucky sat up straighter, which probably shouldn't be a word used to describe anything that the two were up to. "You're game one minute and all doubtful the next. I don't know what to do if you don't."

Steve put his hand over Bucky's mouth, to shut him up for one minute so he could explain. Bucky shook his head at Steve, like "Yes?" "I've always wanted you," Steve raised his eyebrows, " _Believe me_. But I don't want you to feel obligated. I want you to do something because you want to, because you have a choice in the matter for once in your life."

At that, Bucky's face changed from hard and calculating to soft and kind, from the Winter Soldier to James Buchanan Barnes. Steve smiled up at that face. His smile was small, but even the smallest of his smiles were the biggest thing in Bucky's life.

Steve put his hands on Bucky's hips. His eyes were down at the metal arm beside Bucky. "With that in mind, I'll ask you," Steve looked up at the eyes that he never wanted to look away from, "Do you want this?"

There was a pause and Bucky looked down. For a moment, Steve was nervous. Then Bucky looked up and smiled at him, not realizing how torn up inside Steve got at that smile. "More than I thought I could."

In the morning after, the two were sleeping in Steve's bed, now that the room had been cleaned. Steve was covered up by his bedding, only one side of his chest and his arm exposed. Bucky, on the other hand, was not-so-gracefully sleeping on his stomach, one side sprawled out over Steve under the covers, the other side exposed to the stale post-sex air of the room.

And Tony was the victim that walked in on them like that. Right when he saw Bucky's damn asscheek displayed on a bed that he paid for, Tony turned and slammed the door as hard as he could. They were the only two that were still sleeping, anyways.

"I am  _never_ going in that room again, door open or not," Tony almost yelled to anyone that was listening, aiming to wake the men that were probably already awake. " _Those two_  are about as straight as a large order of curly fries!"

From Steve's room, laughter was heard, caused by that last comment.

"Did he see my ass?" Bucky laughed at Steve.

Steve slapped Bucky's arm. "Oh, God, I hope not."

After Steve got out of bed (looking like a fucking underwear model, goddammit) the two went out and further abused Tony by looking at him and laughing any time that they saw him.

"I swear to  _God_ I'm going to kick you two out!"

Everyone, including Tony, knew that he wasn't serious.

* * *

It was a guilty pleasure of his. He didn't know why, but Bucky just really liked provocative music.

He was just in the kitchen, alone on the floor while the other were out doing their jobs, dancing to music that would probably make his mother, whoever she was, roll in her grave.

"Is this what you do when I'm gone?" Bucky jumped when Steve spoke.

"Holy shit, would you please be a little noisier when you walk around?"

Steve laughed once at him, his mouth gaping at Bucky. "You're the one to talk! And I don't think you'd be able to hear anything with this racket going."

"Don't insult my music, Rogers."

Steve gave him a two-finger salute, "Yessir." He walked over to the tablet that controlled the music pouring through the hidden speakers in the kitchen. "My turn."

"What're you doing here anyways? Don't you have a world to save?" Bucky mocked.

"I got the rest of the day off, smartass." Steve said as he chose a song. It was something slow, something old because Bucky didn't recognize it. Of course, it was something from their time. "Come here," Steve said, holding his hand out for Bucky to take.

"You getting sappy on me, Rogers?" Bucky asked and took his hand.

Steve smirked at him. "Straight from the movies." Steve put his arm on Bucky's shoulder, draping it around his neck. He took their clasped hands and raised them to about shoulder level. Bucky didn't remember what to do, but his hand somehow found its way to Steve's side.

Steve remembered it, them dancing like that before. Bucky was trying to show Steve how to dance, but since he was the only one that knew how to, Bucky could only teach Steve from the man's spot in the swaying. "I don't know how to dance like the woman," Bucky would say.

"If I'm gonna dance with dames, then why am I in the woman's spot?" Steve always ignored how crabby Bucky got after he asked that.

"You're shorter than me," was his excuse.

Even then, when Steve was the taller of the two, he was still in the woman's spot. He knew how to dance then, but he chose to be in that spot. He felt like it was something special that they had.

Bucky was told that he took Steve out on double dates with him, all of which ended up having Steve be disappointed. He didn't remember it, but he was pretty sure that, given the time, he did that because it was as close to a date with Steve that he could get at the time. That's what he told Steve he thought he believed in the past. He noticed the way Steve's eyes looked after telling him that.

"You know," Bucky said as they swayed, putting his head on Steve's shoulder, "You make remembering things about my past a good thing." It wasn't a coincidence that the parts of himself that he could remember, only a few things, all had to do with Steve.

"How long has your hair been like this?" Steve asked suddenly.

"Like what? Oh, Nat told me to do it like this one day. I guess I kept doing it this way."

Bucky could just barely see Steve's smile. "I like it."

He could have sworn his ears turned several shades darker. His heart raced, pounding like the damn butterflies that were in his stomach. "Thanks. Now I'm all flustered."

Natasha, peeping at the two from a place where they couldn't see her, told Clint and Sam as it was: "They're so damn cute."

Bucky made the two something to eat and they went to watch TV. He just looked at Steve, watched him watch TV, smiling at him. When Steve looked over, he saw Bucky smiling up at him. "What?"

"Nothin'," Bucky said, looking at Steve like he was absolutely perfect, "I just don't know how I got by all those years without you."

Steve was pretty flattered by that. "I'm the one wondering that," he said. " _And it surprises me that everyday you can give me another reason to love you,"_  he thought, but really wanted to say.

When Steve got up to put their dishes in the kitchen, he ran into the end table. It happened sometimes, when he forgot how to maneuver with all of his six feet. He ran into things sometimes when he was really out of it or too tired to remember that he wasn't little anymore.

"Forget how to walk again?" Bucky teased, knowing the reason why Steve stumbled sometimes.

Steve stuck his tongue out at the jerk and continued walking.

From her spot in a chair by the TV, Nat sneezed.

"I thought you're too much of a badass to get sick?" Bucky had a comment for everything.

"I'll give it to you if you don't shut up," Nat smiled. Looking at him, she remembered what Steve made her promise. Her smile disappeared.

Bucky smiled down at the laptop he was using. He was sitting with his back to the arm of the sofa, so no one should have been able to look at what he was researching. In the search engine, he typed " _what is love?_ "

Steve came back and plopped down on the other side of him, respecting his privacy. Bucky was too busy looking at the laptop to notice the look that Steve was giving him. It was that looking up through his lashed, small smile of affection that Nat saw the two give each other often.

The two fell asleep on the sofa, curled into each other. Nat knew that Bucky was sleeping because Steve told her that he only sleeps with his mouth open. She thought it was damn adorable that Steve would notice something like that. The was the two were snuggling into each other was more adorable than that fact, though. She would make a note to tell Steve her thoughts on that.

* * *

If the mind can wonder, Steve's mind was wandering in a very southerly direction. Bucky pried his mouth away from Steve's so they could take their shirts off. The two hurried to kiss again, like it pained them to be separated. The air was the enemy to them, the space between them needed to be eliminated, like the air between their bodies was going to kill them. Their lives depended on being together, their bodies connected somehow.

On some level, that was the truth.

Bucky licked that spot under Steve's jaw that he was perplexed by on their first mission together. Steve responded by looking at him like he was just burned by something, then grabbed him by his dark, long hair behind his head. He pulled Bucky's head back, exposing his throat and freshly shaven jaw. He leaned Bucky back, using his other hand to put on his lower back, bending the man back and licking up Bucky's neck, up under his jaw.

Bucky moaned under Steve's tongue, resonating under it, making Steve push him back and kiss him hard.

In the night, when Bucky had Steve's head laying on his chest, the laptop on the desk lit up. Bucky's heart pounded. He knew that he shut it off. Rolling Steve over so he wouldn't wake him, Bucky got out of bed and went to the device. He moved his finger on the touchpad, wiggling it and making the screen come to life.

" _Compliance will be rewarded,"_  was in white letters on the black screen.

There were images of the Hydra men that worked on him dancing across his mind. Bucky shut the laptop, falling to the ground. He looked over at the sleeping man in the bed and breathed into his hands to calm himself down. They were still there, the men in his mind, the ones that turned him into the monster that he was.

The next morning, Bucky had to act as though nothing was wrong. Steve was smarter than that. "You okay, Bee?"

Bucky yawned. "Yeah. Couldn't sleep last night."

"Nightmare or me?"

That made him laugh. "Nightmare. You don't keep me up at night, sorry to disappoint, Rogers." It was really neither of the two, but Steve didn't need to know that.

No, he  _couldn't_ know that.

He got paranoid. Bucky had one part of his mind always on the thought that Hydra agents could be anywhere, preparing to get to him or planning their next move. They could have been anyone, he knew that. He kept an eye out for anyone that looked at him the wrong way, or anyone that seemed like they knew that he wasn't doing as the organization wanted.

They were everywhere, within every system of government and every branch of the economy. They were even in his dreams.

Then it happened.

One of them made the move on him.

He was in a suit, which Bucky knew was a bad thing. If they came in suits, that meant they had no intention of bloodying their freshly pressed clothing. They knew that blood would not be shed.

"Calm your mind," he said, his British accent reminding him of his handler. Or was that his handler? He couldn't remember. "You know what is best."

"No," Bucky said, trying to run.

But his legs wouldn't move.

"What is best is you comply."

He could feel his heart beating through his ears, his fingers, his throat.

"Compliance will be rewarded."

His mind was closing in on itself. The doors that were open, that were his freed mind, were shutting on him. He hated those doors closed. They closed when he was with Hydra, when he didn't have Steve. He tried his best to hold the doors open, so he wouldn't be shut out of the rest of his mind. Bricks, chairs, tables, rope, all of it wasn't helping.

The man stepped closer to Bucky, seeing his mind struggle to stay free.

"Are you ready to comply?"

The doors clicked shut.

He looked up at the man, another one of the blank slates of his Hydra that he couldn't see past. They were all the same, all of them tools for the betterment of the world.

His breathing was stable, his heart rate down to a calm beating.

"Happy to comply."

* * *

He was to lead the blond to an open area where a sniper, though nowhere near the level of him, would take the target down.

They weren't satisfied with the progression of his mission. The handlers decided to take it into their own hands.

"So where did you want to eat?" The blond asked him, his eyes too bright. He prefered to look into the darkened eyes of his targets.

" _Act like you did before. You will lead him to an area in the city, where one of our men will take him down. Do not let him suspect you, or you will know why we have two guns up there,"_  one of the handlers told him before the mission.

"Somewhere outside," he told the blond.

They walked through the city, all the faces meshing together like they always did. None of the faces ever mattered to him. The only ones that mattered were his targets. Even after he eliminated them, he didn't remember them. Hydra was kind to him that way.

"That one looks good," the blond said, pointing to a little shop on the corner. He didn't know where the snipers were positioned, but he didn't have to. He trusted that they would be able to handle the situation, wherever he led them.

He gave the man a smile, the way that he liked them. "Good to me."

Steve thought that Bucky would have been more nervous going out to eat in public, but he was as calm as a cucumber. He acted like he had a good handle on the situation. Steve liked it better than him acting so paranoid like a few days before.

" _If you fail this mission, we will erase everything that you have built up to this point._ " He knew that the blond dying was better than him having to start all over again. He had enough of starting over. He was tired of starting over. The man dying was the best option.

But something in him was terrified of forgetting the man sitting in front of him.

" _Him dying is better than them getting a hold of him,"_  he caught himself thinking. He would let the handlers know that later, so they could punish him for even having the thought.

"You sure you're okay? You're kinda zoning out."

He looked up at the man.

Those eyes.

Under his glove, the metal arm twitched on the table. The man saw that, his eyebrows pinching in confusion. He remembered telling the man the reason behind his hand fidgeting at times. He cursed himself for letting that detail be known, by his target nonetheless.

The man looked at him again. Eyebrows tilted back, mouth open slightly, the corners turned down, eyes focusing on him. He looked hurt.

" _Steve_."

Bucky heard the sniper get ready to shoot the man in front of him, the man he loved.

He never told him that, told Steve he loved him.

His body moved before he could think. He was grateful for that, because under Hydra's control, his mind would have told him to stay put. Bucky sprung from his chair, knocking over the red metal table separating him and Steve. He felt a bullet tear through his shoulder, taking with it more bone than flesh. They fell to the ground, the bullet going through both of them. Bucky made sure that it didn't hit any part of Steve's vitals and looked back to where he thought the sniper shot from. The commotion of the people around them made it impossible for him to hear anything that the snipers could be saying.

The second shot went off, hitting only Bucky, passing through the left side of his chest, grazing past his heart.

He looked down at Steve under him, his eyes on the red that exploded from Bucky's chest. Blood covered Steve's face, his blood splattering on the side of his face and in his eyes.

Steve didn't know what happened. All he knew was Bucky remembered something when he looked up at Steve, his arm twitched, and they were shot at.

Steve did know that he had to get them out of there, in case there were more shooters. It was without a doubt Hydra, but he didn't know what they wanted. Was their target Bucky or him? The first was more likely, given that they nearly succeeded in killing him before.

"Go," Steve said, pushing Bucky off, "Get outta here!"

Bucky thought that was cruel, Steve telling him to get out of there when he was the reason why they were injured. "No. Not without you. I won't leave you."

Steve remembered the last time Bucky said that.

Steve put Bucky's arm over his shoulder and dragged him to a building with pillars coming down in the front. He sat Bucky up against a wall of the building, sure that no snipers could shoot through the overhand of the building. He looked behind him at the dispersing crowd, checking that none of them were-

"They weren't the targets," Bucky said, coughing up blood.

Steve looked back to him. "I know. The question is, who was?"

Bucky couldn't handle it anymore. He was tired of giving into Hydra. He was so sick of doing what they told him, at the cost of the lives of strangers. He wanted to tell Steve everything, everything that they had ever done to him and made him so, the things that weren't in his files.

By the way he was bleeding, he knew that he didn't have time for that.

"You're the target," Bucky said, looking at the shallow wound on Steve's shoulder. He put his hand up to it.

Steve didn't notice that he had been shot. All he felt was the expression of Bucky's face when he took the bullets. He took Bucky's hands off his chest and put his own to Bucky's wounds, pressing on them to slow the bleeding. He had enough of seeing Bucky bleed.

"Steve, leave me. Your aren't going to want me after this."

Steve looked at him, smiling like he was crazy. "What're you talking about?" He laughed at he spoke, exhaling his words in a single chuckle. "I can't leave you here-"

"I knew they were here, Steve!"

Steve didn't understand. How could Bucky know that Hydra was there when-

The pressure on Bucky's wounds lessened as Steve realized what was going on. "You set me up," he said, stating it in dumb shock.

The holes in his chest weren't causing the pain he was in. "You're right," Bucky said through his closing throat.

"You- you  _led_ me here?"

"Yeah but, I- they made me-"

Steve ground his fists into Bucky's bloodied shirt. "I've used that excuse for you before. It's worse hearing it come from you."

Bucky didn't know why he was trying to save himself from drowning. The shark had already taken a bite out of him. "I couldn't tell you. They had me-"

"Stop." There were tears forming in his eyes, blue like the star on his damn arm. "I can't take you giving me that excuse, something that I've used to defend your actions before." Bucky was using that excuse to defend his actions against Steve that time.

They could hear the Hydra men coming, coming for God knows what reason.

"Steve," Bucky coughed, "run. Please." Bucky took Steve's hands off of him, off of his wounds. "Leave me. Just leave me. The worst thing they can do to me is hurt you."

Steve laughed, this time bitter. "What's the point in running?" He looked to the side. "Apparently they had a hold of me this whole time."

Bucky's eyes were like a torrent. Fast and flowing. "I didn't want to," he sobbed, "Steve just get out of here,  _please_!" Steve meant that Hydra had control over Bucky and Bucky had a hold on Steve.

A dozen agents moved in on them, the two men under the pillars of a building. One of them was holding onto the shirt of the one kneeling, crying up at him to run away as he wouldn't even look at the bloodier man.

Bucky was starting to hope that they would kill him for disobeying their orders. If Steve felt as betrayed as he looked, then Bucky would welcome death with a happy embrace.

"We knew that he had gotten to close to you, Captain Rogers." The handler from before, the one that got Bucky to comply, said. He spoke slowly, pronouncing his words like it was an art. "He became too involved with you. We  _assumed_ that he started to care about you. With the little  _stunt_ that he just pulled by taking a bullet for you, seems we were right."

"Yeah, so what?" Steve challenged, standing up and making Bucky claw at the absence of Steve.

"So  _what_? We decided that we want the original version instead of our," he paused to look at the mess of a man on the ground, " _fail_  of an attempt at a super-soldier." They wanted to see how their methods would stand up against the original.

Hearing that made Bucky want to throw up. "Get away from them, Steve! What the hell are you doing? Just run!" He tried to get up, wobbling from his blood loss. The Hydra agents didn't even bother to make sure he didn't get up. Bucky fell, his heart still hurting more than his wounds.

"What's the point?" Steve's back was turned to him. He looked over his shoulder at Bucky, "There's nothing beyond the end of the line."

Bucky was sure his heart gave out at that moment.

Bucky struggled when Hydra put Steve on his knees, guns to his head. They restrained him and left Bucky screaming for Steve to run, fight, do  _something_ so they wouldn't take him away to be tortured, put through the equivalent of hell.

One of the men got sick of Bucky's screaming and kicked him across the face, knocking him unconscious.

After Hydra left and before the police and paramedics came, a man under a hood stood by the unconscious assassin, casting a glance back at the car that he parked a few yards away, calculating the time it would take to get him in the back seat.


	14. Validation

They were in the room attached to the one Bucky was resting in. Nick had dragged the man to his car and brought him to the tower. He complained about the blood on his backseat and expected Tony to pay for it to be cleaned.

"I brought him here. The least I can ask for is you to pay the dry cleaning," Nick said, giving Tony the eye.

Nick went on to explain what he saw happen. He couldn't hear the two talking at their table, but he saw how Barnes looked different than before. He was spying on them, yes, but he had good reason to. Something happened and Barnes threw himself at Steve, right as a gun went off. Nick knew who the targets were. Steve took Barnes to a building with cover and watched their body language. Then Hydra came, took Steve, and left Barnes to bleed out.

"Steve could've escaped easily. He just… gave up. I saw his face when they were taking him away. He was about the most broken that I've seen a man."

Bucky didn't understand why there was a bed under him. At first, he thought all the shit that happened was just a bad dream. Then he felt the burn in his shoulder, the lack of bone and tissue.

He felt his chest, the hole that was there but not there. The physical wounds were dull in comparison.

Bucky looked over at the IVs in his arm, yanking the needles out and pulling the heart rate monitors off his wrecked chest and unplugging the damn machine so it would stop making noise.

He had been asked by Nick to go to the tower. At first, he was reluctant because Captain Rogers still didn't know he was alive and he didn't want to leave his team, his new Director position. Nick told him that Rogers had been captured by Hydra, and he knew that wasn't an issue. May told him to go, that it was important to him so he should help. Coulson was asked to go check up on Barnes in his room, leaving Nick to explain the situation he had previously been informed of.

Phil walked in (unaware to Barnes) and saw the man staring at the shield in the chair across the room, silently crying. He expected the man to be yelling when he woke up, having a fit about being in a room he didn't know or screaming because no one was acting to save Steve.

Coulson noticed that the heart monitor was silent and the IVs hanging by the bed.. "Why'd you take the IVs out?"

He expected Barnes to jump. Again, he was wrong. "I don't need them." As far as he could tell, Barnes' voice was unaffected by his crying.

"Just like you don't need you heart rate monitored?"

Barnes just shrugged, ignoring the pain in his shoulder when he did so.

Coulson walked closer to the bed, taking notice of every detail of Barnes' movements. He really didn't trust the guy. "You know, it's kind of unsettling seeing the world's best assassin crying."

Bucky's eyebrows twitched and he wiped at his face. He didn't know that he was crying.

"He's awake?" Stark called out from outside of the room.

Phil called back over his shoulder, not looking away from the assassin for a second.

Everyone came in the room, all wondering just what the hell happened when they went out to eat.

Tony asked Bucky to fill them all in, but he just sat there not looking at any of them.

"Do you know where they took him?" Sam tried asking.

"Of course I fucking know where they took him." The volume of his words took the hostility out of his voice.

"Well what the hell? Why aren't you telling us anything?" Clint asked, getting impatient with his mopey ass.

He guessed it didn't matter if they knew the truth too. Steve's opinion of him was all he cared about, and it didn't go well when he told him about Hydra. Bucky saw the men, their guns against Steve's head, them taking him away. Out of his control, his lungs jerked and Bucky put his head back in his pain.

"Listen here," Tony said, also impatient with the bastard, "You know what they're going to do to him. They'll condition him, break him down to nothing. They'll pulverize his will and make him a blank slate."

Bucky's chest heaved and he started coughing.

Nat went over to him on the other side of the bed, putting her arm on his back. Bucky coughed into his hand, blood dripping from his cupped palm and to the white linens of the medical center's bed. "They'll sit him down or lay him down or whatever, plug his head into their machines," Bucky was waving at Tony, to get him to stop, "And wipe his mind." Tony continued on, even after Natasha was yelling at him to stop. "They'll erase every memory he has of you, every memory that you share and the ones that you can't even remember."

"Tony!" Nat yelled, astonished at what he was doing.

"They'll wipe his mind clean and it's all your fault," of which Tony didn't know was really true, but he had his suspicions.

Bucky clenched his blood-filled hand, hurling it into the bed, yelling "Don't you think I already know that?!"

"Then why didn't you do something to save him?" Tony shot back. If he cared about Steve so much, why did he just sit by and let Hydra take him? Why did he  _let them_  win?

Bucky rubbed his face with his clean hand, shaking his head. "You don't get their hold on us. Hydra has full control. I  _couldn't_ do anything."

Pepper was the one to ask what they were all wondering. "Wait a minute… Were you acting under their orders?"

The others chimed in after that, all asking questions like "Are you with Hydra?", "How long have you been with them?", "Are you with them still?" and thinking that they should just throw him out.

Bucky heard them all, but ignored them. He turned to Natasha, not looking her in the eye. "Can you promise me something?"

The others were quieted when Bucky spoke, almost too soft for them to hear him.

"What is it?" Nat responded.

"If Steve doesn't get out of this," she tried to stop him right there, but he grabbed her wrist and made her listen, "If he dies, I do. I want you to find the most painful death for me."

Why did they ask her to do these things? "I can't." Nat thought about the promise she made to Steve.

""You need to," Bucky looked up then, his eyes grey instead of their usual blue, "I can't live knowing that my actions sent him to his death."

Nat swallowed. "If you tell us what's going on."

"You promise?"

Nat nodded her head in his direction. "Do you?"

Bucky started without a thought. "My mission never changed. I was sent to kill Steve Rogers. I came here for that reason, and to collect information on you all. They never needed to go looking for me because they knew I was here the whole time."

Tony knew it. He knew it back when Hydra raided the tower and he sent Steve and the bastard to the House.

"You work for Hydra," Nat stated. They all felt so  _stupid_.

"I wanted to leave. I've tried so many times. All they do is find me and erase my reasons for wanting to leave. no one gets what kind of hold they had on me. It's all you know. "For the betterment of Hydra," they told me. That's what I would tell the targets."

"Why couldn't you tell us about Hydra?"

"If I could? No, I can't even say that. I couldn't say anything. They make us stay silent."

"Then why can you tell us about them now?" Sam asked.

Bucky shook his head. "No idea. Probably because I broke out of their grip so soon after they had me comply." Nat asked what that meant and he actually forgot that they didn't know. "Their brainwashing. They have you comply to do what they want. They use trigger phrases that've been implanted into my subconscious. I've never broke out of it so soon before."

"Did Steve make you break out of it?"

Bucky's mouth flattened, much like his heart. "Yeah."

"Why couldn't you leave? Wasn't your being here endangering him?" Bruce asked, since everyone seemed to be talking.

"Run from Hydra and leave Steve, or stay with him and face them." Bucky's voice began to tremble, much like his lower lip. "I chose to stay. I chose him and I couldn't even tell him that because he'd probably try to take them all on at once, the proud bastard. I couldn't leave him and this is where it got us." He sniffled and wiped his mouth. "I was supposed to run off a long time ago, but I couldn't find in myself to. I'm a damn coward that chose to stay and look what happened." He chose to stay with Steve and let his feelings for the man grow instead of running and never developing those feelings. In retrospect, it would've been a hell of a lot easier if he never let his heart control his actions. None of that would've happened to Steve if he never went back with his to the tower that day.

"You really couldn't have told us that you're with Hydra, or were, or whatever your affiliation is?" Clint asked.

"I wanted to. Believe me, if not anything else, I wanted to tell you all." Bucky rubbed at the blood on his mouth. "I hate that he was hurt and I hate that he was taken because of me. I love the damn idiot but I was fucking programmed to not say anything against Hydra." Bucky continued, not being able to see the looks that everyone was giving him and each other. "And besides, you see what happened when they found out I wasn't really on their side. I chose Steve over Hydra and they found out. They tried to kill me off and took Steve so they can can try to replicate what they did with me."

Bucky looked at them, not registering that they were trying not to burst about Bucky admitting that he loved Steve. He looked to Nat, the same look on her face. "You know, you may not have to kill me." He smiled down at his chest. "Feels like I'm dying already."

Tony laughed once. "One can only hope."

Bucky looked at him, right at him. "You don't get it, not that I'd expect you to."

"Oh wah, wah," Pepper tried to stop him before he said anything he regretted, but Tony went on. "So lemme guess, you'd rather die than live without him and all that shit? You sound like such a little bitch right now."

Bucky didn't even know what to say. He tried to think of something, but he was only ever good at snarky remarks when it was with Steve. He looked away, the air hitting his cheeks and the drying tears on them.

Wait. He didn't need to think about what to say. He would just say it.

"I feel like I'm dying without him. I feel like my heart is tearing itself up and gnawing at the rest of my chest." Bucky looked at Tony, trying to get him to understand. "There's no point in having the damn painkillers because they can't do anything for what I'm feeling."

He started getting louder, his broken body, heart, and soul straining desperately to keep up with the demand. He was trying not to cough while he spoke, trying not to spit up more blood. "I know that this is all my fault, I will  _never_ deny that. You don't have to be such an idiot and keep blaming me because I will always blame myself more than any of you-"

His throat was filled with blood again, it spilling into and out of his mouth and into his hand. Nat rubbed his back again, telling Bucky to stop doing that.

"They already have him," Bucky coughed, "There's nothing that you can say or do that'll hurt me."

"Stop talking," Nat ordered and stood, directing her attention to everyone.

"Clint, you know first hand what kind of trouble people like us get into. You got me out of the KGB and I redeemed myself." Clint gave her a look. "Somewhat," she added, knowing that look. Nat looked down at Bucky, understanding what he was going through, "I know what it's like to be so far in that there's no end in sight. I know what it takes to get people to trust you again, after all the wrong you've done." She looked back up. "I'm with him on this. He never wanted to do any of it. It's just following orders."

They all seemed to forget Natasha's past when they were judging Bucky's.

"I haven't been here long, so I probably don't count as much for or against anyone's cause, but I'm with you two on this," Bruce said, nodding at Nat and Bucky.

"Why?" Bucky didn't think anyone had any reason to be on his side anymore. He didn't deserve it. He guessed he never did.

"It doesn't matter what you did in your past," Bruce replied, "it matters what you decide to do in your future, acting off of the things that happened in your past, the things you can't change."

Sam, Clint, Pepper, Nick, and Phil thought about that. No one has a perfect past. You can't learn if you never fail in something. A good person isn't the one that never screws up, it's the one that knows how to act after they do mess up.

"Okay, okay," Tony said, holding his hands up to interrupt everyone's thoughts. " _Before_  we all get into a big fight about this, let's  _not_." His arms went to his side. "I'm willing to bet the farm we're all going to be on the same side eventually, so there's no point in arguing over it now."

Tony walked to the bed, crossing his arms at Bucky. "You're a pussy."

Bucky sat back, ready for the slew of insults that Tony was about to give him.

"You're a coward and a poor excuse for a man. Steve deserves better than you, and you know that. You're sitting here crying like a little girl. You're not doing one  _very_ significant thing that'll save him. Just sitting here like a little flower and blowing in the wind."

"Do you have a point or do you just want me to get mad at you?" Bucky knew that getting mad at Tony was pretty inevitable. Because it's  _Tony_.

"That  _is_ my point. You're already through the sadass mopey stage." Bucky looked up at him when he paused, which was exactly what he wanted. "You're overdue with the sad shit. Now it's time for you to get angry."

Bruce's head popped up like it was on the end of a spring. He raised his hand, "I- I would know some about that."

* * *

Bucky didn't remember his feelings for Steve. They didn't come back to him. The memory of him telling Steve came back, but the feeling was new to him. Meaning he fell in love with Steve twice.

It was when his mother died. Steve tried to go home, but he took Bucky's offer and went over to his place. He joked about setting sofa cushions on the floor and camping out like when they were kids. He knew that wouldn't happen. Bucky also knew that they wouldn't sleep separate. He started crying, so Bucky got him into bed and held him until he fell asleep.

Bucky woke up with a little Steve Rogers in his arms, looking up at him with tormenting blue eyes. He told him then, with those eyes latched into a stare with his.

"I love you, Steve."

Steve laughed. He  _laughed_ , playing it off like the love of a friend. "Love you too, pal." Steve didn't want to mistake it for the wrong thing. He didn't want to be the one to say it as more than a friend, didn't want to be denied.

"No, I mean… Steve, I'm…" Steve looked up at him, not knowing how his eyes tore Bucky up inside. "I'm  _in_ love with you." He gave emphasis by poking his head out, then letting it retreat with his last three words.

Steve didn't want to believe it, in case it wasn't real. But his arms threw themselves up at Bucky and his mouth spoke. "Buck, I love you too."

Coulson walked in the War Room, as Tony called it, bringing Bucky back to the present.

"I'm supposed to be dead to him, you know. To Captain Rogers."

Bucky rolled his eyes. "Everyone calls him "Captain" but he isn't even a captain."

Phil smiled. "It stuck."

"You need to tell him," Bucky took the shield off of the table, just holding it in his hands. "The longer you put it off, the more it'll hurt him later." Bucky looked up to the man he just met. "You don't have any reason to trust me, but trust me on that. I know."

The others came into the room, all taking a seat. Bucky was the only one standing.

"You know we can't risk going in there unprepared," Fury said as he sat at the other end of the table.

Without looking back at the man he was relieved he didn't kill, Bucky spoke. "We can't wait any longer and risk his memories." They didn't really have a tactic set out, but they couldn't wait any longer. They wouldn't allow Hydra the extra time to prep Steve.

"Alright everyone," he looked back at the screen behind him, a map of the Hydra headquarters. He knew it thoroughly. It was where they took him to be reprogrammed, so he Bucky had been there many times. He smiled at the map, happy that he could use that knowledge against the damn power-hogging shells of human beings. "This is how we get into Hydra."

* * *

Under a diamond layer, there were the things that Bucky felt about Steve, what he thought about the man, what he remembered about him. That layer was what kept him from falling in love with Steve again. It was what Hydra did to him to keep their soldier contained. It was stronger when he wasn't with Steve, before they met again after years of being apart.

That layer cracked, revealing the beautiful world under it, revealing the actual thickness of that layer. Bucky thought it was the strongest thing on Earth, that diamond layer. He didn't know that whatever he felt or knew about Steve was buried under a layer as thin as a hair. Steve was buried down in him because of Hydra, but the layer wasn't as deep down as they would have wanted. Bucky realized that what he felt wasn't under some miles-thick layer that was impossible to break. He found out that his love for Steve wasn't buried so deep down after all.

He had a new strength that he never felt before. Bucky knew he had to make sure Steve was alright and get him back, if he could. He wouldn't blame Steve, though, if he hated Bucky and didn't want anything to do with him after it all. He knew he never deserved Steve.

But Bucky had to try.

He fought so hard, with new life, because he knew he couldn't live without Steve.

Natasha noticed that, the new way Bucky was fighting. She shared her thoughts with Fury, who Bucky just apologized to for almost killing, "He's different now, the way he fights. Before, he was fighting because someone told him to." Nat looked at Fury after she kneed a guy in the head. "Now, he's fighting  _for_ someone, to save them."

One of the Hydra agents that Bucky actually remembered was trying to run. He was one of the weak ones that would crack under the right pressure. Bucky knew this and took it to his advantage. He picked the guy up by the back of his shirt, throwing him into a wall and pinning him up there.

"Tell me where he is. I already found out that you guys took him somewhere different than my times here. At least, that's what the last guy told me."

The agent was unfazed. "I'm not-"

Bucky didn't let him finish and dislocated his shoulder. "You want every joint dislocated? Every finger and every toe?"

The agent, fazed by that, shook his head passionately.

Bucky moved his head closer, so the man could  _smell_ the hatred that came out of his voice, "Then tell me where Steve Rogers is."

after he got the information that he needed, Bucky knocked the guy out and tossed him to the side. "This way," he instructed.

Steve didn't know where he was, who the people were that were hitting him, or even who he was. He just wanted them to stop hurting him. He just wanted to stop hurting.

"Are you ready to comply?" they kept asking him.

He didn't care either way.

All he remembered was that man that broke him, that clawed at his heart for years and decades and tore it out like it was nothing to him after he stopped his clawing. Tormented eyes that he helped to ease. Ears that listened to the things he had to say. Lips that told him lies.

He kept calling out the name of that man that tossed his feelings aside. Like his heart, they were nothing to him, cast aside like the garbage that it was. The people hit him every time he did that, cry out a name that they wanted him to forget. He didn't remember the name after a while, but he could still call it out. No one there understood how he could do that. Their frustrated ignorance made them hurt him more.

He didn't know how many days that he had been there, not that it mattered either. All he knew was pain, and all he wanted was it to stop.

A few times, in between the shocks, he would remember a hard hand in his and not feel pain. Then they would see that and hurt him again. He couldn't tell what they were doing anymore, how they were hurting him. It was all the same. All of it was pain so it didn't matter in what form it was.

They put him in the chair again. He didn't try to get out of it. Didn't matter either. He wanted the pain to stop, but he didn't have the will to make it stop.

"I just want to die," he would say, "Why won't you let me die?"

He didn't know that they couldn't hear him. Everything was muffled, besides the name he shouldn't have been able to say.

In truth, he didn't want to die. He just wanted that hand in his again, but he didn't want to admit that to anyone.

He wanted the man to save him. He knew that man could stop his pain like it did when they met again after all those years. But he didn't want to give in that easily. He didn't want to admit that he wanted that man after letting him play with his heart.

"Back for more?" a man, one of the ones that was hurting him, asked.

"I never left." He thought he said, but no one could understand him through his screams.

Bucky let the man he just punched fall to the floor. "I'm here for him," he said, pointing at the man in the chair, "And to kick ass."

The handler that had made Bucky comply was next to the power switch on the machine they used to wipe his mind, whatever the damned thing was called. He called over a subordinate and took his time walking to Bucky. "Take a deep breath," he said, smiling at Bucky.

Bucky back-pedaled. The handler closed the gap again.

"You know what is best. What is best is you comply."

Everyone watched Bucky struggle, his hands move to his ears and try to block out the words that they used against him.

"Compliance will be rewarded."

Bucky put his head down, looking away from the handler.

"Are you ready to comply?" The handler was smiling at Bucky. He looked up at the SHIELD team, knowing all of their faces. They had no need for the failure anymore, but Hydra could use the Soldier to wipe out the SHIELD team. It would save them the effort of dealing with them.

Then Bucky snorted, continuing his laughter like he was the funniest thing since the invention of the knock-knock joke.

The handler looked down at him, not understanding why he was laughing. Bucky straightened and wiped the invisible tear at his eye.

"That doesn't work on me anymore, you fucking idiot," he said, putting his hand on his hip and shaking his head at the man.

The handler waved at his subordinate, who turned on the chair. Bucky punched his ex-handler right in the teeth and took him by the waist, throwing his upper body into the floor. His head cracked against the concrete and Bucky ran to the man at the power switch. After he dealt with that guy, Bucky told the others what to go to and he himself went to Steve.

He was being hurt again. They shocked him so many times. It felt like he was in the chair more times than they hit him. Then the shocking stopped and he could open his eyes. He saw a man there, instructing a team of others on what they should turn off and what way they should turn things, what buttons to press.

He looked at the metal hand, the one he remembered holding. He reached out for it like an animal attracted to a shiny object, confusing the man in front of him. Yes, he remembered that hand, how it was unexpectedly warm though it was made out of metal.

"Steve?" Bucky asked, not understanding why Steve wasn't looking at him. He reached out for Bucky's hand, of all things.

He thought that maybe it was the thing that Steve could remember about him, like how he could remember Steve's eyes. Then he thought that was childish, that there was no reason for Steve to be like him and hold onto one thing to remember about the other man. That was just him. Steve couldn't be like that too.

"It's always warm," Steve mumbled, rubbing the metal with his thumb.

Steve wasn't all the way through the process, so he shouldn't have had trouble with remembering things other than Bucky's arm. But it was the first thing he looked at, like he was searching for it.

Bucky thought it was funny that Steve remembered his arm over anything else. Out of all the things that Steve could remember… Steve caring so much about his stupid arm made him feel like he shouldn't hate it so much. He felt like he should appreciate it more. Even if he was over thinking and Steve didn't hold onto his arm to remember, Steve trying to get Bucky to like his arm more made him actually want to.

Tony looked at the man on the ground. He knew him. Even when the man had sunglasses on back when what felt like years ago, he knew him. He knew that voice that brought the news, that voice that formed the words about who killed his parents.

"Son of a bitch," Tony said aloud.

Nat asked him what was wrong. Tony sounded taken aback.

"This is the guy who told me Tin Man offed my parents."

The team looked at him like he was about to do something to the man and they should stop him.

"Why does everyone think that I'm going to start killing people? It's getting kind of offensive."

Bucky turned back to Steve, happy with knowing the rat that told Tony about something he couldn't even remember doing.

"Bucky?" Steve said, finally looking at him.

"Yeah?" Steve grabbed at his jacket, searching him like he didn't believe Bucky was really there.

"That's your name, right?"

Bucky's smile disappeared. "Yeah, it is. Do you know who I am?" He had to ask.

"You're the guy who slashed my heart out," Steve said like he was answering a question on a test. It was informative, without emotion. He was stating a fact.

Bucky exhaled, his gaze downcast. "You're right. What else do you know?" Steve should have only been on the verge of forgetting. Whatever Hydra did to him in the two days since he was taken couldn't have been enough to wipe his entire memory.

"I wanted you to come, even though I'm mad at you." Steve could remember his name again. He told himself he didn't want Bucky to come save him, but he knew he was lying to himself. More than wanting the pain to stop, he wanted to see Bucky again, even if he couldn't remember his face or even remember wanting that.

"I remember you calling me a queer," Steve said without holding back. He was still out of it, so he couldn't understand the look that Bucky gave him.

Bucky closed his eyes and sighed. "I was trying to push you away, so I could run off and not get you trapped in my mess with Hydra. Do you understand that?" He wanted Steve to get that he never meant that. It hurt knowing he was still thinking about that.

"But they still got to me."

Bucky wasn't sure how much longer he could stand. His knees were going to give out if Steve wouldn't come to his senses. He was being brutally blunt, but Bucky knew he didn't deserve anything less than that. "And I'm not going to let that happen ever again. For as much as my shoulder fucking  _hurts_ right now and when it hurt when they shot me, it hurt so much more seeing that look of betrayal on your face, Steve."

"Is that an apology?" Steve smiled at him, forcing a smile out of Bucky. It was always hard for him to not smile back at that contagious smirk.

"No. You deserve more than an apology."

"You look like a baby without your beard." Steve felt more like himself with every moment that Bucky was next to him. He  _told_ himself he wouldn't let Bucky in so easily if he could remember what Bucky did, but he didn't have it in him to stay mad.

"I can't win with you, can I?"

The handler woke up, coming back to consciousness, with a flight stabilizer in his face.

"Move and I get the satisfaction of killing your dumb ass," Tony said.

"It's no use, agent," the handler was speaking to Bucky, "You cannot outrun Hydra. Even if you escape here, you cannot-"

"Would you shut the hell up?" Bucky turned to the man. "Just shut up because I have full intention of getting the hell out of this shitbox and marrying this prick the second he lets me," Bucky said, pointing at said prick behind him with his thumb. Bucky turned to Steve, sighing. "Do you  _believe_ these idiots?"

Steve's eyebrows lifted and he moved himself up in the chair. "You're going to have to say that again after I stop feeling like I just had lightning hit me a thousand times." Steve looked up at Bucky, remembering himself more. "And you have a lot of redeeming to do."

"I know, I know," Bucky reassured, helping Steve sit up better, "You have time to hate me later, but for now just… listen." Bucky took Steve's hand, looking back at Nat to get encouragement from her. She nodded at Steve, her eyes wide. " _What're you asking me for?"_

Bucky turned to Steve, holding both of his hands. "The star of my arm? It's blue because it reminds me of your damn eyes."

His arm. That's what Steve… "Buck."

"Your eyes were the thing that I held onto more than anything else. I remembered them before anything else about you. I held onto them like my life depended on it. And I know that's true because I know I can't live without you in my life. My name was never meant to be used without you saying it." He wasn't looking at Steve's eyes because of how nervous he was.

"Of all the things that they erased, of all the things that I could've forgotten, I still remember you… Sort of." Steve smiled at that. "They tried to get rid of you from my past, but you're stuck there like the rope holding us together." That's right. What they thought was a string holding their lives together was actually a rope. It wasn't about to break on them. "I've messed up in the past, tried to tie that rope back together, and now I know. I can't feel whole without you there, even if I  _could_ forget you."

If he was going to get even the slightest bit sappy, Bucky was going to go all-out. Even if it was in front of the team.

"You'll always be my mission because I revolve around you. I'm always there, wherever you are. My life is consumed by you and I don't want it any other way. I know that I'm just an idiot with three holes in his chest, two from bullets and the third being from my actions against you." Bucky raised Steve's hands to his face, putting them next to his cheek. "The objectives of my mission have changed. I'm not going to kill you, and I have a feeling I was never going to. My next objective in my mission that is you is to marry your dumb ass."

"Bucky-" Steve tried to say, though he had no words.

"Shush, I'm not done." Bucky kissed Steve's hands and continued on. "I won't keep anything from you anymore, because I can't hurt you again by keeping the truth from you. You're going to know every last detail about me until you tell me to stop. It's all or none, Rogers, so  _deal_."

Steve didn't know what the hell Bucky was doing. Well, he had a pretty great idea of what he was doing, but he just didn't believe that Bucky was doing it in front of everyone. He guessed that Bucky didn't have a reason to hide it from anyone.

Bucky took a stabilizing breath. He didn't get why he was so nervous about it. It's not like Steve hadn't mentioned how he felt about Bucky somewhat before. "Steven Grant Rogers." Why was he all giddy and nervous and hesitant? He just wanted to get it over with, but wanted to do it right. He was the one that made Steve promise to let him say it first, after all. "First of all, don't think I'm just returning your affection, and I don't just feel this because I know how you feel. I know that as well as I know your eyes are blue, how good your heart is, and for as much as I know you're right here in front of me and that this isn't a dream or nightmare of mine, I know that I am completely and wholly in love with you."

Bucky still felt like his heart was going to explode, but it wasn't a bad feeling. "I know what you skin feels like, what your smile does to me, that my heart literally beats because you're with me, and I know that I love you. I know it because I have felt our very souls touch, brought together by a connection like a steel cable, and I know that I am completely in love with what you were, what your are, and what you will come to be."

Steve always had the fear that Bucky loved him because Steve loved him first. Like loving someone only because they knew that they were loved. His fear was completely washed out, like what his eyes were threatening to do. "Did you write that down somewhere first?" Steve laughed, his eyes ready to burst.

Bucky's eyes gave out first. "No," he shook his head, looking down then back up.

Steve pulled Bucky to him. "All of that was on-the-spot?"

Bucky put his head in Steve's neck, breathing in his almost floral scent. "I have no idea what I just said. I don't even remember it all."

"No worries," Tony piped in, making the two break apart to look at him. "Got it all," he said, tapping his helmet.

"You can bet that'll be on the Internet tomorrow," Sam guaranteed.

"I love you too, just so you know." Steve told Bucky. He didn't have any redeeming to do, so his confession didn't have to be so long. Confession shouldn't be the word used to describe it, though… His validation.

It seemed that, even after he forgot then remembered saying it, Bucky was always meant to be the one to say "I love you" first.

They got Steve out of the chair and made sure he was fine to move around so they could get out of there. Hydra was trying to retaliate, but the team was taking their time. They had full confidence, with the two seniors back together, that they would get out of there without a problem. The Hydra agents felt their confidence, being that they didn't try as much as they could have to get to them. They knew that if there were two trained super-soldiers and a room full of battle-hardened experts, no one was offering to be the first to try and take them down.

"Why didn't you fight back, jerk?" Bucky asked, elbowing Steve, "When Hydra got to you." He knew that he was the one who was called a jerk, but he didn't want everything to be like it was in his past.

"Because I thought I didn't have a reason to anymore, punk." Steve knew the exchange of names was wrong too, but he was happy not to correct Bucky.

"They could have super-soldier babies together!" Clint said, following up with an "awww" of adoration.

Tony looked at Clint like he needed to get away from him before he caught the stupid. "If you gave me a week, it wouldn't be enough time to explain to you why that wouldn't work and give you all the reasons why."

Steve took Bucky's hand, squeezing the metal. "You're wrong, you know."

Bucky looked over at him. "About what?"

"I could never hate you. It isn't in me to hate you." Steve wasn't smiling, but his eyes told Bucky he wasn't lying.

Bucky looked to the others. "So now what?"

"What else is there?" Steve asked, getting Bucky to look at him again. Steve smiled at Bucky, his world, that he knew he would spend the rest of his life with. "We kick ass."

Steve finding out about Bucky working with Hydra? It wasn't the end of the line. It was the beginning of a new, stronger line.

In that smile, that smile that was all that Steve Rogers could be with one corner of his mouth higher than the other and his eyebrows raised and his forehead all wrinkled, Bucky knew that they would get out of there fine. He knew from that smile that, if they were together, they would be nothing less than fine.

Nothing else mattered. Not Hydra, not the views of the public, nothing. All that mattered was Bucky's hand in Steve's, that they had each other. It was the only thing that ever really mattered to them, even if one didn't remember it for a while when the other was in ice. The other man was the only thing that they ever really needed.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you, to anyone, who stuck it out until the end to read my little story. It was a fun ride :)


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